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VIEW OF THE ACTION 



OF THE 



FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 



BEHALF OF SLAVERY. 



BY WTLLIAM JAY. 



" Wc, the People of the United States, do ordain and 
establish this Constitution." — Federal Constitution, 



NEW-YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY J. S. TAYLOR. 

1839. 






Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1839. by 

WILLIAM JAY, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 

Southern District of New York. 



G. F, Hopkins, Printer, 2, Ann street. 






Cf 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Introduction. — Constitutional provisions in 
behalf of slavery — Influence of slavery, co- 
extensive with the Union, . . . 12 

Federal ratio of representation — Its op- 
eration — Caused unfair distribution of the 
Surplus Revenue — Source of political in- 
fluence, 15 

Intimidation — Used as a source of influ- 
ence — Examples, . . . . 19 

Obsequiousness of Presidential Candi- 
dates — Examples, . . . .21 

Efforts of the Federal Government to 
oppress and degrade the free peofle 
of colour — Naturalization law — Militia 
law — Post-0 Mice law — Deprived of the 
rights of suffrage, and rendered ineligible 
to office in the city of Washington by act 
of Congress — Oppressive ordinances of 
the Corporation of Washington, . . 23 



IV CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Slavery under the authority of the Fed- 
eral Government — Power of Congress 
over the national territories — Slavery au- 
thorized by act of Congress — Barbarity 
of the slave code of the District of Colum- 
bia, 27 

Interference of the Federal Government 

for the recovery of fugitive slaves 

Constitutional provision — Act of Congress 
respecting fugitives ; unconstitutional and 
oppressive — Law in the District of Co- 
lumbia — Despotic power of the Marshal 
— His interest to sell free men — Particu- 
lars of the sale of persons not known to be 
slaves — Practice in Maryland and the Dis- 
trict of Columbia contrasted, . . 29 

Negotiations with Great Britain and 
Mexico for the surrender of fugitive 
slaves — Extracts from official documents, 47 

Invasion of Florida, and destruction of 
fugitive slaves — Official despatches, . 50 

Compensation for fugitive slaves obtained 
from Great Britain — Instructions to mi- 
nisters appointed to treat of peace — Trea- 
ty of Ghent — Proceedings in the Chesa- 
peake — Proceedings at Bermuda — Nego- 



CONTENTS. v 

PAGE 

tiations in London — Award of the Empe- 
ror of Russia — Payment by Great Britain, 53 
Attempt to obtain compensation for ship- 
wrecked slaves — Cargoes of three Ame- 
rican slavers rescued in the West Indies 

— Demands upon the British Government 

— Mr. Stevenson's letter — Extraordinary 
resolution of the Senate, ... 58 

The American slave trade — Its cause — 
Land coffles — Many of the victims white 
men and women — The trade of Maryland 

— In Virginia — In the District of Colum- 
bia — The trade licensed by the City of 
Washington — Constitutional power of Con- 
gress to abolish the trade — Act of Con- 
gress regulating the trade, . . .63 

Duplicity of the Federal Government in 
regard to the suppression of the afri- 
CAN trade — The trade permitted by the 
constitution for twenty years, on the de- 
mand of the South — Testimony of Mr. 
Madison — Opposite interests of the breed- 
ing and the planting States — Illegal con- 
tinuance of the trade — Testimony of mem- 
bers of Congress — Testimony of Judge 
Story — Official testimony -Collusive bonds 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

taken from traders — Sale of imported Af- 
ricans — Impunity of traders — Agitation 
in Congress about the trade, connected 
with Colonization — New law respecting 
the trade — Use made of it to promote Co- 
lonization — Act making the trade pira- 
cy — Demand made by Great Britain for 
the fulfilment of the pledge in the Trea- 
ty of Ghent respecting the abolition of the 
trade — How evaded — Condition exact- 
ed — Treaty proposed — Assent of Great 
Britain to the proposed condition and trea- 
ty — Bad faith of the Senate towards 
Great Britain and Mexico — Final decision 
of the Government against any combined 
effort to abolish the trade — Avowals in 

the Senate, 91 

Interference of the Government to pre- 
vent THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN CuBA 

— Instructions to ministers to the Panama 
Congress — Negotiation with Russia — Ne- 
gotiation with Spain — Speeches in Con- 
gress, 120 

Hostility of the Government to Hayti — 
Summary history of Hayti — Act of Con- 
gress prohibiting intercourse with Hayti — 



CONTENTS. VH 

PAGE 

Instructions to ministers to the Panama 
Congress — Speeches in Congress — Ac- 
tion in Congress, on a proposition to ac- 
knowledge the Republic of Hayti — Pres- 
ent condition of Hayti — Extent of Ameri- 
can commerce with Hayti, . . .127 

Conduct of the Government towards 
Texas — Attempt to purchase Texas — 
Origin of the rebellion — Aid afforded the 
insurgents from the United States — Con- 
nivance of the Government — Attempt to 
bring about war with Mexico — Manage- 
ment to effect the recognition of Texas — 
The conduct of the Government towards 
Hayti and Texas contrasted — Effort to 
annex Texas to the United States — Con- 
duct of the Government towards the rebels 
in Texas and Canada, contrasted, . .144 

Attempt to establish a censorship of the 
press — Proceedings in Charleston — Let- 
ter of Post-Master General — President's 
Message — Alabama indictment — Bill in- 
troduced into the Senate — Proceedings 
on it, 161 

Violations of the right of petition and 
freedom of debate — Course pursued in 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

the Senate — In the House of Represen- 
tatives, . . , . . . 170 

Recapitulation of the action of the Fed- 
eral Government, . . . .177 

Responsibility of the free States — Inti- 
mate connexion between the North and 
the South — Power of the North in the 
General Government, . . . 180 

Probable influence of the Anti-slavery agita- 
tion on the permanency of the Union — 
Rights of the South — Consequences of 
violating them — Consequences of separa- 
tion — Conclusion, , 183 



VIEW,&c 



Our Fathers in forming the Federal Constitution 
entered into a guilty compromise on the subject 
of Slavery, and heavily is their sin now visited 
upon their children. By that instrument, the con- 
tinuance of the African slave-trade was guaran- 
teed for twenty years ; — a larger proportional 
representation in Congress, and a larger vote in 
the election of the Executive, was accorded to 
the slave-holding, than to the other States : — the 
power of the nation was pledged to keep the slave 
in subjection ; and should he ever escape from his 
fetters, his master was authorized to pursue and 
to seize him, in any and every of the sovereign 
States, composing our wide-spread confederacy. 

We are not about to exhibit the corrupting in- 
fluence of this compact on the religious sympathies 
and sentiments of our countrymen, in regard to 
slavery; nor is it our present purpose to trace the 
retributive justice of Heaven in that recklessness 
of human life, and in that contempt of human and 
divine obligations, which are hurrying on the 
slave States to anarchy and barbarism ; or in the 
2 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

eagerness so generally exhibited by our northern 
politicians and merchants, to barter the constitu- 
tional rights of themselves and their fellow-citi- 
zens, for the votes and the trade of the South.* 

We propose simply to take a view of the ac- 
tion of the Federal Government in behalf of sla- 
very, — a subject that has yet been but partially 
investigated : and we flatter ourselves, that in the 
course of our inquiries, we shall develope facts, 

* Before this language is condemned as harsh and exaggerated, 
we beg the reader to recall some of the prominent events of the 
last few years, connected with this subject : — the Lynch clubs 
and cruel inflictions of the South, — the sacking of the Charleston 
post-office, — the wholesale and unpunished murders at Vicks- 
burg, — and the frequent burnings alive of negroes, and in parti- 
cular, of Mcintosh, taken by the citizens of St Louis from the 
prison, chained to a tree, and consumed by a slow fire — and the 
advice of Judge Lawless to the grand jury, not to notice the dia- 
bolical atrocity, because it was in fact, the act of the community ! 
As to the North, we point in our justification, to the innumerable 
mobs excited by politicians, against the friends of emancipation, 
— the various attempts made by the state autlwrities to propitiate 
the South, by a surrender of the freedom of speech, and of the 
press, — to the zeal of the merchants in our seaports, in getting 
up anti-abolition meetings, — to the conflagration of Pennsylvania 
Hall, and to the martyrdom of Lovcjoy. In truth, our whole land 
is strewed with monuments of the wickedness and tyranny of 
slavery — monuments, which declare in no doubtful language, 
that our great national sin is not unheeded by Him, to whom ven 
geance belongcth. 



FEDERAL RATIO. 15 

which, with some at least of our readers, will 
possess the merit of novelty. These facts for the 
most part, derive their origin from 

The Federal Ratio of Representation. 

The Constitution provides that the members of 
the Lower House of Congress shall be propor- 
tioned to the free inhabitants of the States they 
represent, except that in each State, three-fifths 
of the slave population shall be for this purpose 
considered as free inhabitants. In other words, 
every five slaves are to be counted as three white 
persons. For example, if by law every 60,000 
free inhabitants may elect a representative, a dis- 
trict containing 45,000 whites and 25,000 slaves, 
becomes by the federal ratio entitled to a mem- 
ber. This stipulation in the Constitution has from 
the beginning given the slaveholders an undue 
weight in the national councils. A few instances 
will illustrate its practical effect. The whole 
number of the House of Representatives is at 
present 242 ; sent from 2G States. Of these, the 
following are slave States, viz: — Delaware, Ma- 
ryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, 
Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Lou- 
isiana, Missouri, and Arkansas. These States with 



16 FEDERAL RATIO. 

a free population of 3,823,389, have 100 mem- 
bers ; while the free States with a free popula- 
tion nearly double, viz. 7,003,451, have only 142 
members. One representative is at present allow- 
ed to 47,700 inhabitants. Now were the slaves 
omitted in the enumeration, the slave States would 
have only 75 members. Hence it follows, that 
at the present moment, the slaveholding interest 
has a representation of TWENTY-FIVE mem- 
bers in addition to the fair and equal representa- 
tion of the free inhabitants. There is certainly 
no good reason why the owners of human chat- 
tels, should by the fundamental law of a Repub- 
lic, have greater privileges awarded to them than 
to the holders of any other kind of property what- 
ever. But such is the compact ; we seek not to 
change or violate it, but only to explain its ope- 
ration. 

Each State has as many votes for President as 
it has members of Congress. The rule of repre- 
sentation in the Lower House has already been 
explained ; in the Senate it is different : and each 
State, whatever be its population, has two Sena- 
tors, and no more. The free population of the 
slave States, as already stated, is half that of the 
others ; but their number being equal, their rep- 
resentation in the Senate is also equal. 



FEDERAL RATIO. 17 

If free population were the principle of rep- 
resentation in the Federal Government, as it is 
with scarcely an exception in all the States, the 
slave States would have 

In the Senate, 13 members. 

In the House, 75 

Electoral votes for President, 88 



They have, In the Senate, 26 members. 

In the House, 100 

Electoral votes for President, 126 

Here we find the secret of the power of the 
South, and of the obsequiousness of the North. 
Ohio, with a population of 947,000, has 19 mem- 
bers ; while Virginia, with a free population of 
200,000 less, has two members more. Take an- 
other example. Pennsylvania has 30 electoral 
votes; the States of South Carolina, Georgia, 
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Kentucky, 
with an aggregate free population of 189,791 less 
than Pennsylvania, have 53 electoral votes ! 

It cannot be supposed that this vast and most un- 
equal representation and consequent political pow- 
2* 



18 FEDERAL RATIO. 

er, will be unemployed by its possessors. On the 
contrary, the slaveholders in Congress have uni- 
formly succeeded in effecting their objects, when 
united among themselves. In 1836, this slave 
power in Congress was adroitly turned to pecu- 
niary profit. The Surplus Revenue remaining in 
the Treasury on the 1st of January, 1837, was to 
be distributed, and the rule of distribution became 
a question. The income, it is true, had been de- 
rived chiefly from the industry and enterprise of 
the North ; but the South insisted, and with her 
usual success, that instead of dividing the money 
according to population, it should be apportioned 
among the States according to their electoral 
votes. By this rule, the slave States, notwith- 
standing their inferiority in population, would 
share alike with the free, so far as regarded the 
number of their Senators ; and with regard to their 
representatives, they would secure an apportion- 
ment of money on account of three-fifths of their 
two millions of slaves. 

The sum allotted by this gross and monstrous 
rule to the States of South Carolina, Georgia, 
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Kentucky, 
was $6,754,5S8 ; while Pennsylvania with a free 
population larger than that of all these six States 
together, was to receive only $3,823,353; so that 



INFLUENCE IN CONGRESS. 19 

in fact the slaveholders of these States received 
man for man, just about twice as many dollars 
from the national treasury, as the hardworking 
citizens of Pennsylvania ! Now as the free States 
have a numerical majority of members, it is im- 
portant to investigate the sources of the slave- 
holding influence in Congress. These may be 
regarded as threefold ; first, their anxiety to pro- 
tect and perpetuate slavery, renders the southern 
members united in whatever measures they con- 
sider important for this purpose, while the repre- 
sentatives from the North, having no common bond 
of union, are divided in opinion and effort. Sec- 
ondly, a slave State having more votes to bestow 
on a presidential candidate, and more members in 
Congress to support or oppose the administration 
than a free State of equal white population, is of 
course of greater consequence in the estimation of 
politicians ; and hence arises an influence reach- 
ing to every measure, and weighing upon every 
question. The peculiar character of the southern 
gentlemen, together with their observation of the 
servility of the northern politicians, have induced 
them to resort, and with great success, to intimi- 
dation as a third means of influence. 

The practice adopted by the slaveholders of 
threatening on all occasions to dissolve the Union, 



20 INTIMIDATION. 

unless they are permitted to govern it, has been 
too long and firmly established to need illustration. 
We will at present merely give a few recent in- 
stances of outrageous menaces; and to justify what 
we have said of the servility of northern politicians, 
it is sufficient to observe, that these menaces were 
unrebuked. 

On the 18th of April, 1836, a petition against the 
continuance of slavery in the District of Columbia 
was presented to the House of Representatives, 
when Mr. Speight of North Carolina declared 
in his place, that " he had great respect for the 
chair as an officer of the House, and a great res- 
pect for him personally, and nothing but that res- 
pect prevented him from rushing to the table and 
tearing that petition to pieces." Of course it was 
to be understood, that the order of the house and 
the rights of northern petitioners were respected 
not from any constitutional obligations, but solely 
because the speaker, himself a slaveholder, was 
acceptable to southern gentlemen. 

Mr. Hammond of South Carolina, the same ses- 
sion, in a speech, used the following language : "I 
warn the abolitionists, ignorant, infatuated barba- 
rians as they are, that if chance shall throw any 
of them into our hands, he may expect a felon's 
dealhr 



INTIMIDATION. 21 

Mr, Lumkin remarked in the Senate, (January 
1838,) " If abolitionists went to Georgia, they 
would be caught :" and Mr. Preston declared in 
the same debate — "Let an abolitionist come 
within the borders of South Carolina, if we can 
catch him, we will try him, and notwithstanding 
all the interference of all the governments on earth, 
including the Federal Government, we will HANG 
him." 

It seems probable from these declarations that 
abolitionists, in their southern travels, will meet 
with " barbarians " quite as " ignorant and infat- 
uated " as themselves ; and also, that should mem- 
bers of Congress, by their votes, imprudently 
identify themselves with abolitionists, and after- 
wards enter the slave region, they could not com- 
plain of not having been explicitly warned that 
the gibbet was to be their fate. 

Such are the sources of the slaveholding influ- 
ence in Congress. The following pages will ex- 
hibit many of the results of this influence, and 
the first to which the reader's attention is called, is 

The Obsequiousness of the Presidential 
Candidates. 

As slaveholders are ready to hang abolitionists 
when they can " catch " them, it is not to be sup- 



22 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES. 

posed that they will elect any of the proscribed 
sect, President of the United States. Of course, 
it becomes important for such gentlemen as aspire 
to that honour, that their ideas on the subject of 
human rights, should be adapted to the meridian 
of the slave region. 

Previous to the last presidential canvass, Mr. 
Van Buren being a candidate, thought it prudent 
to write a letter for publication, containing the 
following passage: — "I prefer that not only you, 
but all the people of the United States, shall now 
understand, that if the desire of that portion of 
them which is favourable to my election to the 
chief magistracy should be gratified, I must go into 
the presidential chair the inflexible and nncom- 
jjromising opponent of any attempt on the part of 
Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Colum- 
bia, against the wishes of the slaveholding States." 

Mr. White was a rival candidate, and deemed 
it expedient to give his pledge also, which he did 
in these terms : — "I do not believe Congress has 
the power to abolish slavery in the District of Colum- 
bia; and if that body did possess the power, I think 
the exercise of it would be the very worst policy. 
Holding these opinions, I would act on them in any 
situation in which I could be placed, and for both 
reasons would, if called on to act, withhold my 
assent to any bill having in view such an object." 



PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES. 23 

General Harrison, a third candidate, also as 
we have understood, wrote his letter, but not 
having it before us cannot quote it. We presume, 
however, it was thought sufficient, since an address 
in his behalf from his political friends in Virginia, 
assured the public that "he is sound to the core 
on the subject of slavery" 

Mr. Webster, the fourth and last candidate, 
had many years before fully committed himself as 
to the power of Congress over slavery in the 
District. He gave no pledge, and received no 
vote from any slave State. 

Having thus seen the extent of the slavchold- 
ing power in Congress, and in some degree, its 
influence over political partizans, we are prepar- 
ed to investigate its direct action in protecting 
and perpetuating the institution of slavery in the 
United States. The friends of that institution 
have always looked with distrust and alarm upon 
the free coloured people, and have deemed it 
good policy to treat them with ignominy, and to 
prevent their acquisition of power and influence : 
Hence the 

Efforts of the Federal Government to oppress 
and degrade the free people of colour. 

The Constitution of the United States acknow- 



24 OPPRESSION OF FREE NEGROES. 

ledges no right or disqualification founded on 
complexion ; but those who have administered it, 
have made the tincture of the skin, of far greater 
importance than the qualities of either the head 
or the heart. So early as 1790, Congress passed 
an act prescribing the mode in which " any alien 
being a white person," might be naturalized 
and admitted to the rights of an American citizen, 

Two years after, an act was passed for organ- 
izing the militia, which was to consist of " each 
and every free, able-bodied white male citi- 
zen," &c. No other government on earth pro- 
hibits any portion of its citizens from participa- 
ting in the national defence ; and this strange and 
degrading prohibition, utterly repugnant to the 
principles both of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence and of the Constitution, marks the solici- 
tude of the Federal Government to pursue the 
policy most agreeable to the slaveholders. But 
not content with this insult to coloured citizens, 
another, and perhaps a still more wanton and 
malignant one, was offered by the Government 
in the act of 1810, organizing the Post Office De- 
partment. The 4th Section enacts that " no oth- 
er than a free white person shall be employed 
in carrying the mail of the United States, either 
as a post-rider or driver of a carriage carrying 
the mail," under a penalty of fifty dollars. 



OPPRESSION OF FREE NEGROES. 25 

Any vagabond from Europe, any fugitive from 
our own prisons, may take charge of the United 
States mail ; but a native born American citizen, 
of unimpeachable morals, and with property ac- 
quired by honest industry, may not, if his skin be 
dark, guide the horses which draw the carriage 
in which a bag of newspapers is deposited ! 

Such are the insults heaped by the Federal 
Government on the coloured citizens throughout 
the States : let us see what conduct it pursues 
towards them on its own territory, over which it 
possesses " exclusive jurisdiction." 

In 1820, Congress passed a law authorizing the 
white citizens of the City of Washington to 
elect white city officers ; thus making a white 
skin an indispensable qualification for both suffrage 
and office. The white officers thus elected by the 
white citizens, were specially empowered by the 
national legislature " to prescribe the terms and 
conditions on which free negroes and mulattoes 
may reside in the city." In pursuance of this 
grant of power, the white officers passed an ordi- 
nance (May 31, 1827,) requiring all the free col- 
oured persons then in Washington and wishing to 
remain, to be registered ; and enacting, that if any 
free man with a coloured skin should presume 
to play at cards, or even to be present while an- 
3 



26 OPPRESSION OF FREE NEGROES. 

other free coloured person was playing, he should 
be fined not exceeding five dollars ; that if he 
should have a dance in his house, without permis- 
sion from the white Mayor, he should be fined not 
exceeding ten dollars ; that should he take the 
liberty to go out of his own house after ten o'clock 
at night, without a pass from a Justice of the 
Peace, or " some respectable citizen," (!) he might 
be compelled to pass the rest of the night " in a 
lock-up-house," and the next morning be fined 
ten dollars ; and should any dark complexioned 
free man be guilty of drunkenness or profane 
language, he should be fined not exceeding three 
dollars. Thus we see with what zeal the Wash- 
ington Corporation endeavours to prevent the co- 
loured citizens from affecting the manners and 
fashions of their white brethren. But there are 
still more serious matters. A coloured citizen 
from any of the States, taking up his residence in 
the Capital of the Republic, is required within a 
certain time, not only to be registered, but also 
to find two freehold sureties in the penalty of five 
hundred dollars, for his good behaviour^ and if 
he does not, he is to be imprisoned till he con- 
sents to leave the seat of the Federal Govern- 
ment ; and if he does not prove that he is a free- 
man, he shall be sold as a slave to pay his jail 
fees !! 



SLAVERY UNDER THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 27 

Such are the abominable and iniquitous means 
used by and with the sanction of Congress, for 
the degradation and oppression of coloured citi- 
zens. We are next to take a view of 

Slavery under the authority of the 
Federal Government. 

It is well known that Congress is the local le- 
gislature of the District of Columbia, and of all the 
territories belonging to the Union, and with pow- 
ers far exceeding those possessed by any State 
Legislature, being unfettered with constitutional 
restrictions. The authority vested in Congress 
over the District and territories, is virtually des- 
potic, being an " exclusive jurisdiction in all cases 
whatsoever." Yet we have long had slavehold- 
ing territories. The vast domain acquired by 
the purchase of Louisiana, has, under the authori- 
ty of Congress, been stocked with slaves, except- 
ing so much as is north of 381° north latitude, 
which is, by act of Congress, specially protected 
from the pollution. This very law is one of the 
most profligate and deeided acts of the Federal 
Government in behalf of slavery ; for by means 
of it, the immense territory south of this line was 
deliberately surrendered to all the cruelties and 



28 SLAVE CODE. 

abominations of the system ; it was moreover an 
express acknowledgement by the Government of 
its power to prohibit slavery throughout the whole 
territory, and that it had made a compromise, a 
bargain between humanity and cruelty, religion 
and wickedness ; and had erected on an arbi- 
trary line, a partition wall between slavery and 
liberty. 

But it is in the District of Columbia, and under 
the shadow of the proud Capitol, that the action 
of the Federal Government in behalf of slavery, 
is exhibited in its most odious and disgusting 
forms. We shall have occasion presently to ex- 
hibit the seat of the National Government, as the 
great slave mart of the North American Conti- 
nent, " furnished with all appliances and means to 
boot." The old slave laws of Virginia and Mary- 
land, marked by the barbarity of other days, 
form by Act of Congress, the slave code of the 
District. Of this code, a single sample will suf- 
fice. A slave convicted of setting fire to a build- 
ing, shall have his head cut off, and his body di- 
vided into quarters, and the parts set up in the 
most public places ! But let it not be supposed 
that Congress has not itself legislated directly on 
the subject of slavery. An Act of 15th May, 
1820, gives the Corporation of Washington, power 



RECOVERY OF FUGITIVES. 29 

to " punish corporeally any slave for a breach 
of any of their ordinances." Happy would it 
have been for the honour of our country, if the 
sympathies of its rulers in behalf of slavery, had 
been exhibited only on the national domain ; but 
they pervade every portion of the confederacy, as 
is but too apparent in 

The interference of the Federal Govern- 
ment FOR THE RECOVERY OF FUGITIVE SLAVES. 

The federal constitution contains the following 
clause : " No person held to service or labour in 
one State under the laws thereof, escaping into 
another, shall in consequence of any law or regu- 
lation therein be discharged from such service or 
labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the 
party to whom such service or labour may be 
due." 

At the time this constitution was adopted, the 
cultivation and manufacture of cotton had not so 
far progressed, as to paralyze by their profits, the 
conscience of the nation, or to divest it of the 
sense of shame ; and hence this clause although 
relating to slaves, forbears to name them. It 
was inserted to satisfy the South ; and its obvious 
meaning is, that Slaves escaping into States in 
3* 



30 RECOVERY OF FUGITIVES. 

which slavery is abolished by law, shall not there- 
fore be deemed free by the State authorities, 
but shall be delivered by those authorities, to his 
master. This clause imposes an obligation on 
the States, but confers no power on Congress ; 
and the Constitution moreover declares, that "the 
powers not delegated to the United States by 
the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the 
States, are reserved to the States respectively, or 
to the people." Hence it follows that as the power 
of recovering these fugitives is not delegated to 
Congress, it is reserved to the several States, who 
are bound to make such laws as may be deemed 
proper, to authorize the master to recover his 
slave. Nevertheless, the Federal Government in 
its zeal for slavery, has not scrupled to assume 
power never delegated to it, and has exercised 
that power in gross and contemptuous violation 
of every principle, which in free countries, directs 
the administration of justice. If a Virginian en- 
ters New-York, and claims as his property a horse 
which he finds in the possession of one of our cit- 
izens, an impartial jury is selected to pass on his 
claim, — witnesses are orally, and publicly ex- 
amined, — the claimant is debarred from all pri- 
vate intercourse with the jury, — he may not be 
alone with them for a moment, nor mav a whis- 



RECOVERY OF FUGITIVES. 31 

per pass between them ; and when the trial is 
over, the jury retire to deliberate on their verdict, 
under the charge of an officer, who is sworn to 
keep them apart, and not to suffer any person to 
speak with them ; nor can the horse be at last re- 
covered but with the unanimous consent of the 
jury. But let the Virginian claim, not the horse, 
but the CITIZEN HIMSELF as his beast of 
burden, and the Federal Government makes all 
things easy for him. By the Act of 1793, the 
slaveholder may himself without oath, or process 
of any kind, seize his prey, where he can find 
him, and at his leisure, (for no time is specified,) 
drag him before any Justice of the Peace in the 
place, whom he may prefer.* This justice is a 
state officer, and of the lowest judicial grade, and 
under no legal obligation to execute an Act of 
Congress, and entitled to no fees for his services. 
He is therefore peculiarly accessible to improper 
influences. Before this magistrate, who is not au- 
thorized to compel the attendance of witnesses in 
such a case, the slaveholder brings his victim, and 

*In New- York the Legislature has interfered, and forbidden a 
Justice of the Peace to act, and has therefore virtually declared 
the Act of Congress to be unconstitutional,— and that the power 
of prescribing the mode in which fugitives shall be restored, be- 
longs exclusively to the States. 



32 RECOVERY OF FUGITIVES. 

if he can satisfy this judge of his own choice, " by 
oral testimony or affidavit" and for aught that 
appears in the law, by his own oath, that his 
claim is well founded, the wretched prisoner 
is surrendered to him as a slave for life, torn 
from his wife and children, bereft of all the 
rights of humanity, and converted into a chattel, 
— an article of merchandise, — a beast of bur- 
den!! 

The Federal Constitution declares : — " In suits 
at common law, where the value in controversy 
shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by 
jury shall be preserved ; but the Act of 1793, in 
suits in wh.ch " the value in controversy " exceeds 
all estimation, dispenses with trial by jury, and in- 
deed with almost every safeguard of justice and 
personal liberty. 

This law, iniquitous as it is, does not require 
State officers to anticipate the pursuit of the slave- 
holder, and to seize and imprison their fellow- 
men, on mere suspicion that they may be claimed 
as slaves. What the Federal Government dares 
not do in the States, it accomplishes on its own 
exclusive territory, and in a manner which, for 
atrocious wickedness and tyranny, leaves far in 
the shade the vilest acts of European despotism. 
This is indeed strong language ; but alas ! Ian- 



SALE OF FREE NEGROES. 33 

guage is too feeble adequately to represent the 
turpitude of the laws and practices sanctioned by 
the Federal Government, in the District under its 
" exclusive jurisdiction." 

By the Act of 1793, a justice can take no step 
for the restoration of a fugitive slave, till the fact 
of his being one is proved before him on oath. 
But in the Metropolis of the Nation, — in the city 
called by the name of the Father of his Country, 
a Justice of the Peace may commit to the United 
States Prison, and into the custody of the Uni- 
ted States Marshal, any man he may choose 
to suspect of being a fugitive slave. Notice is 
then given in the newspapers of the commitment, 
and the unknown owner is warned to take away 
his property, or it will be sold according to law, 
to pay JAIL FEES. 

After the doors of the dungeon have closed upon 
the victim, no magistrate, no court, no jury take 
cognizance of his claims to freedom. The jailor 
is the Only tribunal to which he can appeal, and 
how disinterested a tribunal will presently be seen. 
If a freeman, no master can of course, lawfully 
claim him, and not being claimed, he is sold at 
auction to raise money to pay an officer of the 
Federal Government for the trouble and expense of 
keeping him a few weeks in prison. What civi- 



34 SALE OF FREE NEGROES. 

lized government of the old world practices more 
execrable wickedness ?* 

The whole depth of this villany is not yet 
sounded. The disclosures we are now about 
making should make every ear to tingle and every 
heart to quake. No doubt it will occur to many 
that if a free man, all the prisoner has to do, to 
obtain his liberation, is to prove his freedom. — 
Prove his freedom while locked up in his cell ! 
Where is his counsel ? — where his process for 
commanding the attendance of witnesses? where 
the court sitting in open day to investigate his 
right to freedom ? where the jury to pass upon his 
case ? The marshal, or his deputy the jailor, is 
the only human being, except his fellow-victims, 
to whom he can tell his tale. The marshal is the 
judge, and the sole judge of his prisoner's title to 

* Not as an apology for this expression, but as a reason why 
the writer feels more sensibly than perhaps many others on this 
subject, he thinks proper to mention that a free coloured man be- 
longing to his neighbourhood in West Chester County, N. Y., on 
going to Washington some years since, was there legally kidnap- 
ped, and advertised by the marshal to be sold to pay his jail 
fees. A Washington paper containing the advertisement provi- 
dentially fell into the hands of a citizen of the County who knew 
the man. A public meeting was called, and the Governor of tho 
State, De Witt Clinton, at their request, demanded from the Presi- 
dent his immediate release as a citizen of New- York. 



SALE OF FREE NEGROES. 35 

freedom. He is the arbiter of happiness and 
misery, of liberty and bondage : he opens the door 
of the dungeon, and at his sovereign will bids his 
captive go forth to enjoy the rights and fulfil the 
duties of a rational, accountable, and immortal 
being, or conducts him to the human shambles 
erected in the city of Washington, and there sells 
him under the hammer as a slave for life. 
Compared with this tremendous jurisdiction, the 
powers vested in the highest judicial officer in our 
country dwindle into insignificance. And should 
such a judge be disinterested ? The very question 
is shocking to our every idea of justice. Disinte- 
rested ! Screened from the public eye — account- 
able only to that Being who seeth in secret — de- 
claring his judgement in the recesses of the prison, 
he should of all men be most exempt from human 
passion and infirmity. Yet to this judge the law 
offers a high and tempting bribe to sell men he 
knows to be free, and thus to become a manufac- 
turer of slaves. Will this statement be credited ? 
It cannot, and ought not to be, without full and 
unequivocal proof, and to that proof we now ap- 
peal ; premising for the better understanding of 
our proof, that the marshal is required to maintain 
the suspected fugitives while in his custody and is 
entitled to fees for receiving them, &c, and if un- 



36 SALE OF FREE NEGROES. 

reclaimed has no means of procuring payment of 
his expenses and fees but from the proceeds of 
the sale of his prisoners ; and further, that the whole 
of those proceeds are permitted by law to remain 
in his pocket, unless after the sale the master 
should be discovered, and should claim the bal- 
ance. 

On the 11th January, 1827, the committee on 
the District of Columbia, to whom the subject 
iiad been referred by the House of Representa- 
tives, reported that " in this District, as in all the 
slaveholding States in the Union, the legal pre- 
sumption is, that persons of colour going at large 
without any evidences of their freedom, are ab- 
sconding slaves, and prima facie, liable to all the 
legal provisions applicable to that class of per- 
sons." They state that in the part of the District 
ceded by Virginia, a free negro may be arrested 
and put in jail for three months on suspicion of 
being a fugitive ; he is then to be hired out to 
pay his jail fees ; and if he does not prove his 
freedom within twelve months, is to be sold as a 
slave. This statement is followed by the remark. 
" the committee do not consider any alteration of 
the law in the County of Alexandria in relation 
to this subject, necessary !" In the County of 
Washington, ceded by Maryland, they inform us, 



SALE OF FREE NEGROES. 37 

" If a. free man of colour should be apprehended 
as a runaway, he is subjected to the payment of 
all fees and rewards given by law for apprehend- 
ing runaways ; and upon failure to make such 
payment, is liable to be sold as a slave." That 
is, a man acknowledged to be free, and unaccused 
of any offence, is to be sold as a slave to pay the 
" fees and rewards given by law for apprehending 
runaways." If Turkish despotism is disgraced by 
any enactment of equal atrocity, we are ignorant 
of the fact. Even the committee thought this 
law rather hard, and therefore they " recommen- 
ded such an alteration of it as would make such 
charges payable by the corporation of Washing- 
ton.* But the Federal Government, unwavering 
in its devotion to slavery, made no alteration, and 
the code of Washington is to this day polluted by 
unquestionably the most iniquitous statute in Chris- 
tendom. Laws are sometimes more profligate 
than those who are called to administer them, 
and the committee assure us that the Marshal has 
in all cases refrained from selling his prisoners 
for fees and charges, when their rights to free- 
dom has been established ; and in consequence 
of not availing himself of the privilege allowed 
him by this law, he had incurred, in the last eight 
* See Reports of Committee, 2 Seas. 19 Cong. Vol. I. No. 43. 
4 



38 SALE OF FREE NEGROES* 

years, a personal loss of $500 ! In other words, 
the Marshal's sense of justice, decency, and hu- 
manity, exceeded that of the rulers of our Re- 
public. 

On the 29th January 7 , 1829, the committee on 
the District of Columbia made a report in obedi- 
ence to the instructions of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, "to inquire into the slave trade as it 
exists in and is carried on through the District." 
The report proposes no interference on the part 
of Congress, but is virtually an apology for this 
vile traffic, as is apparent from the following 
heartless sentiments and false assertions. 

"The trade alluded to, is presumed to refer 
more particularly to that which is carried on with 
the view of transporting slaves to the South ? 
which is one way of gradually diminishing the 
evil complained of here ; while the situation of 
these persons is considerably mitigated by being 
transplanted to a more genial and bountiful clime. 
Although violence may sometimes be done to their 
feelings in the separation of families, it is by the 
laws of society which operate upon them as prop- 
erty, and cannot be avoided as long as they exist ; 
yet it should be some consolation to those whose 
feelings are interested in their behalf, to know 



SALE OF FREE NEGROES. 39 

that their condition is more frequently bettered, 
and their ?ninds happier by the exchange."* 

To this report is appended a letter (January 13, 
1820,) from the Marshal to the committee,, con- 
taining most important and heart-rending state- 
ments. It appears from this letter, that from the 
1st January, 1826, to 1st January, 1828, there 
were committed to the Washington prison as 
runaways, 101. 

Proved to be free, and discharged, 15 

Unclaimed, and sold for maintenance, and 

charges, and fees, 5 

Proved to be slaves, and delivered to their 

masters, 81 

101 

In 1828 — Committed as runaways, 78. 

Proved to be free, 11 

Unclaimed, or sold for jail fees, etc. 1 

Delivered to their masters, 66 

78 
Here then is proof, official documentary proof, 
that in three years, 179 human beings were, by 
the authority of the Federal Government, arrest- 
ed in one county of the District, and committed 
* Reports of Committees, 2 Scss. 20 Cong. No. 60. 



40 SALE OF FREE NEGROES. 

to prison on no allegation of crime, but merely to 
to aid the slaveholders in trampling upon those 
great principles of human rights, for the protec- 
tion of which the National Government was pro- 
fessedly founded. It is also in proof that of these 
179 prisoners, 26 were, by the confession of the 
Marshal, free men ; men whom (as appears from 
the report we have quoted,) he had a legal right 
to consign to hopeless and awful bondage, merely 
because they were too poor to pay the expenses 
of their unjust imprisonment ; and who were in- 
debted for their liberty, not to the laws and con- 
stitution of their country, but to the beneficence 
of their jailor — a beneficence too, exercised at 
his own pecuniary loss. -Proof also is here given, 
that six persons unclaimed as slaves, were, by the 
judgement of this same jailor, without counsel, 
witnesses, or trial, sentenced to be sold as slaves 
for the purpose of raising money, the whole of 
which, as we shall presently see, was paid over 
to the judge who pronounced the sentence. The 
Marshal gives in his letter the particulars of the 
sale of the five unclaimed negroes, as follows, viz: 
Si — Amount of jail fees, etc. 884 82 

Offered for sale according to law, and 
no person being willing to give 884 82, he 
was purchased by Tench Ringgold, the 



SALE OF FREE NEGROES. 41 

Marshal, for that sum, and afterwards sold 
by him to Robert Bown for $20, by which 
the Marshal lost, 64 82 



Hannah Green sold for $61 00 

Maintenance, etc. 48 71 



Balance remaining in Marshal's hands, $12 29 



Lewis Davis sold for $250 00 

Amount of fees, etc. 50 07 



Balance remaining in Marshal's hands, $199 93 



James Green sold for $80 00 

Fees and maintenance, 49 66 



Balance remaining in Marshal's hands, $30 34 



Arthur Neal sold for amount of his jail 
fees and maintenance, to the Marshal, 
being $46 06 

Sold afterwards by private sale to J. G. 

Hutton for 40 00 



Lost by Marshal, $06 06 

4* 



42 SALE OF FREE NEGROES. 

The letter concludes thus : " The Marshal has 
always considered it to be his duty whenever a 
negro was committed as a runaway by a Justice 
of the Peace, who in all cases under the law com- 
mits them, which negro had not in his possession 
proof of his freedom, but alleged himself to be a 
freeman, to write to any part of the United 
States to persons who the negro affirmed could 
prove his freedom, urging them to send on their 
certificates of such negro being free ; and in ma- 
ny instances, these letters of the Marshal or his 
jailor have been the means of bringing proof that 
the negro was free. 

" The law of Maryland in force in this District, 
directs that the balance of sales of negroes (sold 
as runaways) shall remain in the Marshal's hands 
until the runaway was identified as the property 
of some master ; and in conformity thereto, the 
Marshal has uniformly handed over such balance 
whenever the master proved his property. In a 
late case, Mr. Sprigg of Louisiana, lost a valua- 
ble slave, who escaped from him, and made his 
way to this District, and was committed to my 
custody, advertised and sold, according to law ; 
leaving a balance of five hundred dollars, after 
paying maintenance, etc. in my hands. The ne- 
gro was carried to Louisiana by the person who 



SALE OF FREE NEGROES. 43 

purchased him of me, discovered by his former 
master, Mr. Sprigg, who sent on here and claimed 
his money. Having ascertained that this negro 
was the property of Mr. Sprigg, I paid the 8500 
on demand to his agent here, Mr. Josiah Johnson, 
Senator of Congress from that State. 

Tench Ringgold, Marshal, Dist. Col." 
Such are the secrets of the prison-house, estab- 
lished by the Federal Government. It may be 
well to contemplate them in detail. It appears 
from the cases of Si and Neal, that the Marshal 
of the United States after deciding on the liberty 
or bondage of his prisoners, is allowed to take his 
fees in human flesh, and the condemned becomes 
the property of the very judge who sentenced him 
to servitude, and who carries him into the market 
there to make out of him as much money as he 
can. True it is, Mr. Ringgold's speculations ap- 
pear not to have been very productive, but other 
jailor-judges may have less honesty, or more skill 
in negro flesh. The Marshal it seems sold his 
fees in the shape of Si, for only $20. No reason 
is assigned for this nominal price. Very probably 
it was a case similar to the one described by Mr. 
Miner, in his speech on the floor of the House of 
Representatives, in 1S29. "In August, 1821," said 
Mr. M. " a black man was taken up, and imprisoned 



44 SALE OF FREE NEGROES. 

as a runaway. He was kept confined until Octo- 
ber, 1822, four hundred and five days. In this 
time, vermin, disease, and misery had deprived 
him of the use of his limbs. He was rendered a 
cripple for life, and finally discharged as no one 
would buy him" 

The Hannah and James Green sold for fees, 
were most likely man and wife, and may remind 
us that the law we are considering is utterly 
reckless of the most sacred relations. The pro- 
ceeds of three of the five sold in 1826-7, after 
deducting fees, &c. is $242,56, and this sum, ac- 
cording to law, the Marshal retains till called for ; 
but if the negroes were free, then, there being no 
claimant^ the money can never be called for, and 
becomes the perquisite of office, and the income 
of the Judge of course fluctuates according to 
the number of freemen he condemns to slavery. 
Thus does the law literally press upon the Mar- 
shal the wages of unrighteousness — thus does it 
bribe him to the commission of wickedness. In 
one instance, the receipts of a single condemna- 
tion were 6500, of which the Marshal was de- 
prived only by a most extraordinary accident. 

And now let us review the conduct of the Fed- 
eral Government towards the free coloured citi- 
zen of any State, who presumes to visit the city 



SALE OF FREE NEGROES. 45 

of Washington. At the will of a Justice of the 
Peace he is thrown into prison. His jailor, if he 
possesses the humanity and disinterestedness of 
Mr. Ringgold may, if he pleases, write letters to 
distant parts of the confederacy, although he 
knows that a favourable answer may keep some 
hundred dollars from finding their way into his 
pocket. If no such answer arrives, without any 
evidence that the letter of inquiry was ever re- 
ceived, the poor wretch is condemned as a slave, 
and the price of his bones and muscles is paid to 
the judge who condemned him. 

And by whom is this accursed law kept in 
force ? By Northern Representatives and Sena- 
tors in Congress. On the 8th February, 1836, the 
House of Representatives resolved, that " Con- 
gress ought not to interfere in any way with sla- 
very in the District of Columbia," and no less 
than 82 northern men had the hardihood to re- 
cord their names in favour of the resolution. To 
place if possible, in a still stronger light, the con- 
duct of these men, it may be mentioned that the 
law we have been considering, belonged to the 
code of Maryland, at the time the District was 
ceded, and was continued in force by Act of Con- 
gress. In the meantime, the Legislature of Mary- 
land, composed of slaveholders, yielding to the spirit 
of the age, has erased this foul stain from her 



46 SALE OF FREE NEGROES. 

statute-book, while our northern democrats with 
liberty and equality forever on their lips, in hope 
of getting a few southern votes for their party, 
discover that Congress ought not to interfere in 
any way with slavery in the District, although it 
is by the authority of Congress that freemen are 
converted into slaves. 

We will now place side by side, two advertise- 
ments, one published by authority of Congress, in 
which northern men have the majority ; the other 
by authority of the slave State of Maryland, — the 
first relating to a woman and infant claiming to 
be free, the other to a man confessing himself a 

SLAVE. 

"Notice. — Was committed to the jail of Wash- 
ington county, District of Columbia, as a runaway, 
a negro woman, by the name of Polly Leiper, and 
her infant child William ; she is five feet four in- 
ches high, about twenty-three years of age. She 
had on when committed #•*'*• Says she 
was set free by John Campbell, of Richmond, Va. 
in 1818 or 1819. The owner of the above-de- 
scribed woman and child, if any, are requested to 
come and prove them, and take them away, or 
they will be sold for their jail fees and other 
expenses as the law directs. 

Tench Ringgold, 

May 19, 1827. Marshal." 



RECOVERY OF FUGITIVES. 47 

"Runaway. — Was committed to the jail of 
Washington County, Maryland, on the 24th De- 
cember last, a mulatto man who calls himself 
John McDaniel, about 25 years of age. * * 
Says he belongs to William Hill, living at Fal- 
mouth, Va. and was sold to John Daily, living 
somewhere in the South. The owner of the said 
slave is requested to come and take him away, or 
he will be released according to law. 

Christian New comb, Jan. 

Sheriff:' 
December 10, 18£7.* 

The endeavours of the Federal Government to 
secure the restoration of fugitive slaves to their 
m asters, is not confined either to the District of 
Columbia, or to the States of this confederacy. 
Even American diplomacy must be made subser- 
vient to the interests of the slaveholders, and re- 
publican ambassadors must bear to foreign courts 
the waitings of our government for the escape of 
human property. 

On the 10th of May, 1828, the House of Repre- 
sentatives requested the President " to open a 
negotiation with the British government in the 

* Both advertisements are taken from the Washington Intelli- 
gencer. 



48 FUGITIVES IN CANADA. 

view to obtain an arrangement whereby fugitive 
slaves who have taken refuge in the Canadian 
provinces of that government, may be surrendered 
by the functionaries thereof to their masters, upon 
making satisfactory proof of their ownership of 
said slaves." 

Here was a plain, palpable interference in be- 
half of slavery by a government which we are 
often assured by the slaveholders " has nothing to 
do with slavery ;" and so tame and subservient 
were the northern members that this disgraceful 
resolution was adopted without even a division of 
the House ! At the next session, the impatience 
of the slaveholders to know if Great Britain would 
restore their slaves who had taken refuge in 
Canada, could brook no longer delay, and the 
House called on the President to inform them 
of the result of the negotiation. The President 
immediately submitted a mass of documents to the 
House, from which it appeared that the zeal of 
the Executive, in behalf of " the peculiar institu- 
tion," had anticipated the wishes of the Legislature. 
Two years before the interference of the House, 
viz : on the 19th of June, 1826, Mr. Clay, Secre- 
tary of State, had instructed Mr. Gallatin, Amer- 
ican Minister, in London to propose a stipulation 
for M a mutual surrender of all persons held to 



FUGITIVES IN CANADA. 49 

service or labour under the laws of either party 
who escape into the territories of the other." Mr. 
Clay dwelt on the number of fugitives in Canada, 
and desired Mr. Gallatin to press on the British 
Government the consideration that such a stipula- 
tion, would secure to the West India planters the 
recovery of such of their slaves as might take re- 
fuge in the American Republic ! 

Surely the Federal Government was never in- 
tended by its founders to act the part of kidnapper 
for West India slaveholders. 

On the 24th of February, 1827, Mr. Clay again 
urged Mr. Gallatin to procure this stipulation, and 
informed him that a treaty had just been conclu- 
ded with Mexico, by which that power had engaged 
to restore our runaway slaves* 

On the 5th July, 1827, Mr. Gallatin communi- 
cated to his government the answer of the British 
Minister, that " it was utterly impossible for them 
to agrea to a stipulation for the surrender of fugi- 
tive slaves." 

Determined not to take no for an answer, Mr. 
Clay desired Mr. Barbour, our then Minister in 
England, to renew the negotiation, inasmuch as 
the escape of slaves into Canada is "a growing 

* Such a treaty was negotiated, but the Mexican Congress re- 
fused to ratify the base compact. 
5 



50 FUGITIVES IN FLORIDA. 

evil ;" but alas ! Mr. Barbour replied that on 
broaching the subject to the British Minister, he 
had informed him " the law of Parliament gave 
freedom to every slave who effected his landing on 
British ground."* To have attempted to march 
an army into Canada, for the purpose of seizing 
these fugitives, would have cost rather more than 
they were worth. There was, however, a territory 
on our southern frontier, belonging to a power less 
able than Great Britain to punish aggressions on 
her sovereignty, and hence it is that we are called 
to consider 

The invasion of Florida, and destruction of 
fugitive slaves by the forces of the fed- 
ERAL Government. 

On the 15th March, 1816, Mr. Crawford, Sec- 
retary of War, addressed a letter to General Jack- 
son, informing him that there was a fort in Florida^ 
occupied by between 250 and 300 blacks, and 
that they and the hostile Creek Indians were 
guilty of secret practices to inveigle negroes from 
the frontiers of Georgia, and directing him to 
call the attention of the Commandant at Pensacola 
to the subject. The Secretary added, that should 

* State papers, 2 Sess. 20th Cong. Vol. I. 



FUGITIVES IN FLORIDA. 51 

the Commandant decline interfering, and should 
it be determined that the destruction of the negro 
fort does not require the sanction of Congress, 
means will be promptly taken for its reduction. 

Gen. Jackson, however had, before the receipt 
of this despatch, " assumed the responsibility" of 
sending his orders respecting this very fort to 
Gen. Gaines. "If the fort harbours the negroes of 
our citizens, or of friendly Indians living within our 
territory, or holds out inducements to the slaves 
of our citizens to desert from their owner's service, 
it must be destroyed. — Notify the governor of 
Pensacola of your advance into his territory, and 
for the express purpose of destroying these lawless 
banditti^ The letter concludes with directions 
to "restore the stolen negroes to their rightful 
owners." (Letter of 8th April, 1816.) 

Owing to some cause not explained, Gen. Gaines 
did not fulfil his instructions ; and a gun boat was 
sent up the Appalachicola river by order of Com- 
modore Patterson, and on the 27th July attacked 
the fort by firing red-hot shot at it. A shot 
entered the magazine which exploded. The re- 
sult is thus stated in the official report : " Three 
hundred negroes, men, women and children, and 
about 20 Indians, were in the fort ; of these, 270 



52 FUGITIVES IN FLORIDA. 

were killed, and the greater part of the rest mor- 
tally wounded." 

Commodore Patterson, in his letter to the Sec- 
retary of the Navy, observes : " The service ren- 
dered by the destruction of this fort, and the band 
of negroes who held it and the country in its 
vicinity, is of great and manifest importance to 
the United States, and particularly those States 
bordering on the Creek nation, as it had become 
a general rendezvous for runaway slates and 
disaffected Indians — an asylum where they found 
arms and ammunition to protect themselves against 
their owners and the government. This hold 
being destroyed, they have no longer a place to 
fly to, and will not be so liable to abscond. The 
force of the negroes was daily increasing, and 
they had commenced several plantations on the 
banks of the Appalachicola."* 

Various plantations have also been commenced 
in Canada by fugitive slaves, but being under the 
protection of Great Britain, and not of Spain, the 
Federal Government has wisely abstained from 
any forcible attempt to destroy them. 

It is now time to advert to one of the most 
extraordinary exploits of American diplomacy, viz : 

* State papers. 2 Sess. 15th Cong. No. 65. 



FUGITIVES PAID FOR. 53 



Compensation for fugitive slaves, obtained 
by the Federal Government. 

The presence of British armed vessels in our 
southern waters, during the last war, afforded an 
opportunity to many of the slaves to escape from 
bondage. In 1814, and while the war was raging 
in all its fury, commissioners were appointed to 
treat of peace, and instructions were given to them 
as to the stipulations to be inserted Jn the treaty. 
These instructions contain the following remarka- 
ble passage. " The negroes taken from the south- 
ern States should be returned to their owners, or 
paid for at their full value. If these slaves were 
considered as non-combatants, they ought to be 
restored : if as property, they ought to be paid 
for." Moreover, this stipulation is expressly in- 
cluded " in the conditions on which you are to 
insist in the proposed negotiations." — Letter of 
instructions from Mi\ Monroe, Sec'y of State, 28th 
January y 1814.* 

Thus we see that not even the calamities of 
war, could divert the attention of the Federal 
Government form the peculiar interests of the 
slaveholders. The commissioners were faithful 

* American State papers. Vol. IX. p. 36-4. 
5* 



54 NEGOTIATION FOR PAYMENT 

to the charge thus given to them ; and in the 
treaty concluded at Ghent, adroitly provided for 
the restoration of slaves ; and in such obscure 
terms as ultimately secured a far more extensive 
concession than the British negotiators had any 
intention of making. 

The 1st Article is as follows: "All territory, 
places and possessions whatever, taken from either 
party, by the other during the war, or which may 
be taken after the signing of this treaty, shall be 
restored without delay ; and without causing any 
destruction or carrying away of the artillery or 
other public property originally captured in said 
forts or places, and which shall remain upon the 
exchange of the ratifications of this treaty, or any 
slaves or other private property." 

The treaty was ratified at Washington on the 
17th February ; and six days after, three commis- 
sioners appointed by the government appeared in 
the Chesapeake, authorized to demand and receive 
the slaves on board the British squadron still in 
our waters. 

Captain John Clarelle happened to be at the 
moment in command of the British forces, and he 
positively refused to give up a single fugitive ; 
contending that the stipulation in the treaty rela- 
ted only to slaves " originally captured in forts or 



OF FUGITIVE SLAVES. 55 

places," and remaining in such forts or places at 
the exchange of the ratifications, and had no re- 
ference to slaves who had voluntarily sought pro- 
tection on board British vessels. 

A few days after, Admiral Cockburn arrived, 
and a similar demand was made upon him. He 
also refused to surrender any fugitives, as such 
were not intended in the treaty, but gave up 80 
slaves which were found on Cumberland Island 
at the time that place was captured, and who had 
not been removed previous to the exchange of 
ratifications ; this being a case directly within the 
true meaning and intention of the treaty. The 
Secretary of State then applied to the British 
Charge d'Affaires at Washington, requesting him 
to direct the Naval Commanders in the Chesa- 
peake to give up the fugitives on board their ves- 
sels ; but Mr. Baker declined interfering, taking 
the same view of the article as the Admiral had 
done. In the meantime, the squadron had sailed 
for Bermuda. The Government, tracking the 
scent of a fugitive with blood-hound keenness, 
forthwith despatched an agent to Bermuda in 
pursuit, to demand the negroes of the Governor. 
The worthy Englishman, nettled at a requisition 
so derogatory to the honour of his country, repli- 
ed, " he would rather Bermuda, with every man, 



56 NEGOTIATION FOR PAYMENT 

woman, and child in it, were sunk under the sea, 
than surrender one slave that had sought protec- 
tion under the flag of England." 

The Agent, (Thomas Spalding) nothing daunt- 
ed, now assumed the diplomatist, and addressed 
a long argumentative despatch to Admiral Grif- 
fith, commanding on the Bermuda Station, de- 
manding the fugitives, and promising to furnish 
him with a particular list of the slaves claimed, 
which he expected to receive in a few days from 
the United States. The Admiral very cavalierly 
assured Mr. Spalding that it was quite unneces- 
sary for him to wait at Bermuda for the expected 
document, since there was, neither at Bermuda 
nor any other British island or settlement, any 
authority " competent to deliver up persons who 
during the late wars, had placed themselves un- 
der the protection of the British flag."* 

From British Governors and Admirals, our Go- 
vernment now turned to the British Cabinet, and 
found that there also it was held a point of hon- 
our to keep faith, even with runaway slaves. 
Lord Castlereagh declared that the Government 
never would have assented to a treaty requiring 
the surrender of persons who had taken refuge 

♦State papers — 14th Cong. 2d Sess. — Senate documents » 
No. 82. 



OF FUGITIVE SLAVES. 57 

under the British Standard. Again was the de- 
mand made, and again was it unequivocably re- 
jected. Bat the administration refused to yield, 
and insisted on a reference of the question to the 
decision of a friendly power, and named the Em- 
peror of Russia as umpire. After tedious nego- 
ciation, this point was carried ; and in 1818, a 
convention was concluded at London, submitting 
the true construction of the treaty to the Empe- 
ror, who decided in favour of the slaveholders. It 
now became necessary to determine how the 
number of the slaves, and their value, should be 
ascertained. Another negotiation ensued, which 
resulted in a second convention, by which it was 
agreed that each party should appoint a certain 
number of Commissioners, who should form a 
Board to sit at Washington, to receive and liqui- 
date the claims of the masters. But difficulties 
soon arose. The American Commissioners insisted 
on interest* which the others refused to allow. 
Negotiations again commenced, till at last the 
British Cabinet, wearied with the pertinacity of 
the American Government, and sick of the con- 
troversy, entered into a third convention, (13th 
JNov. 1836) by which the enormous sum of one 

MILLION TWO HUNDRED AND FOUR THOUSAND DOL- 
LARS was paid and received in full of all demands. 



58 DEMAND OF PAYMENT 

Thus after a persevering negotiation, conduct- 
ed for twelve years, at Washington, in the Chesa- 
peake Bay, at Bermuda, at London, and at Pe- 
tersburgh, did our Government succeed in obtain- 
ing most ample compensation for the fugitives. 
Commissioners were then appointed to distribute 
this sum ; and after fixing an average value on 
each slave proved to have been carried away, it 
was found that a surplus still remained ; and this 
surplus was divided among the masters ! 

Having now T seen the success that attended the 
pursuit of fugitive slaves, let us next witness the 

Efforts of the Federal Government to reco- 
ver SHIPWRECKED 8LAVES. 

Considering the extent of the American slave- 
trade, it is not surprising that our slaves are oc- 
casionally driven out of their course ; and are 
sometimes wrecked upon the dangerous reefs 
abounding in the neighbouring Archipelago. 

On the 3d Jan. 1831, the Brig Comet, a regular 
slaver from the District of Columbia, on her usual 
voyage from Alexandria to New-Orleans, with a 
cargo of 164 slaves, was lost off the Island of 
Abaco. The slaves were saved, and carried into 
New-Providence, where they were set at liberty 



FOR SHIPWRECKED SLAVES. 59 

by the authorities of the Island. A portion of 
the cargo, (146 head) was insured at New-Or- 
leans for 671,330. 

On the 4th Feb. 1833, the Brig Encomium, 
from Charleston to New-Orleans with 45 slaves, 
was also wrecked near Abaco, and the slaves car- 
ried into New-Providence, where, like their prede- 
cessors, they were declared to be free. 

In Feb. 1835, the Enterprise, another regular sla- 
ver from the National Domain, on her voyage to 
Charleston, with 78 slaves, was driven into Bermu- 
da in distress. The passengers, instead of being 
thrown into prison as Bermudians would have been 
in Charleston under similar circumstances, were 
hospitably treated, and permitted to go at large. 
These successive and unexpected transmutations 
of slaves into freemen, roused the ready zeal of 
the Federal Government. Directly on the loss 
of the Comet, instructions were sent from Wash- 
ington to our Minister, to demand of the British 
Government the value of the cargo. In 1832» 
another despatch was forwarded on the subject. 
The instructions were again renewed in 1833. 
the Secretary of State remarking, this case " must 
be brought to a conclusion — the doctrine that 
would justify the liberation of our slaves, is too 



60 DEMAND OF PAYMENT 

dangerous to a large section of our country to be 
tolerated." 

In 1834, fresh instructions were sent, and a de- 
mand ordered to be made for the value of the 
slaves in the Encomium. 

In 1835, similar instructions were sent relative 
to the Enterprise. 

In 1836, the instructions were renewed ; the 
Secretary observing to Mr. Stevenson, "In the 
present state of our diplomatic relations with the 
Government of His Britanic Majesty, the most im- 
mediately pressing of the matters with which the 
United States' Legation at London is now charg- 
ed, is the claim of certain American citizens 
against Great Britain for a number of slaves, the 
cargoes of three vessels wrecked in British Isl- 
ands in the Atlantic." 

Thus for six successive years did the Cabinet 
at Washington keep sending despatches to their 
agents in England, urging them to obtain payment 
from Great Britain for these cargoes of human 
flesh. Nor were those agents remiss or reluctant 
in fulfilling their instructions. Numerous were 
the letters addressed to the British Secretary, 
claiming either the restoration of the slaves, or 
their equivalent in money. 

From a long and laboured communication from 



FOR SHIPWRECKED SLAVES. 61 

Mr. Stevenson to Lord Palmerston, we extract 
the following morceau. 

"The undersigned feels assured that it will 
only be necessary to refer Lo d Pa'merston to 
the provisions of the Constitution of the United 
States, and the laws of many of the States, to 
satisfy him of the existence of slavery, and that 
slaves are there regarded and protected as prop- 
erty : that by these laws, there is in fact no dis- 
tinction in principle between property in persons 
and property in things ; and that the Government 
have more than once, in the most solemn manner, 
determined that slaves killed in the service of the 
United States, even in a state of war, were to be 
regarded as property, and not as persons ; and 
the Government held responsible for their value" 

No answer having been vouchsafed to this let- 
ter, and the argument being exhausted, Mr. Ste- 
venson tried the virtue of a diplomatic hint that 
the United States would go to war for their 
slaves ; expressing his hope in a letter to Lord 
Palmerston, that the British Government would 
" not longer consent to postpone the decision of a 
subject which had been for so many years under 
its consideration ; and the effect of which can be 
none other than to throw not only additional im- 
pediments in the way of an adjustment, and in- 
6 



62 SHIPWRECKED SLAVES. 

crease those feelings of dissatisfaction and irrita- 
tion which have already been excited ; but by 
possibility tend to disturb and weaken the kind and 
amicable relations which now so happily subsist 
between the two countries, and on the preservation 
of which, so essentially depend the interests and 
happiness of both." — (Letter of 31st December, 
1836.) 

How this hint was received we are not inform- 
ed ; but it is certainly not creditable to the Brit- 
ish Government, that instead of a prompt and 
frank refusal lo deliver into cruel and perpetual 
bondage, innocent men who had providentially 
been thrown under its protection, or to estimate 
their value in pounds, shillings, and pence, it had, 
at our last accounts, avoided giving a decided an- 
swer to the demands of the Washington Cabinet, 
under pretence of taking the opinion of the law 
officers of the crown. 

The negotiation was made public in conse- 
quence of a call by the Senate on the President 
(7th Feb. 1837) for a copy of the "Correspon- 
dence with the Government of Great Britain in 
relation to the outrage committed on our flag 
and the rights of our citizens, by the authorities 
of Bermuda and New-Providence, in seizing the 
slaves on board the Brig 'Encomium' and 'En- 



AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. G3 

terprise,' engaged in the coasting trade, but which 
were forced by shipwreck and stress of weather 
into the ports of those Islands." 

The language of this resolution, indicates the 
influence exerted by slavery over the Federal 
Government. Should a murderer escape from 
England and land on our shores, we refuse to 
surrender him to the justice of his country ; but 
when the West India authorities refuse to deliver 
two hundred and eighty-seven innocent men, wo- 
men, and children, thrown by the tempest under 
their protection, into hopeless interminable slavery, 
the Senate solemnly pronounce the refusal to be 
an outrage on our flag, and the rights of our citi- 
zens. Moreover, the liberation of these persons is 
spoken of as a seizure of them, and the slavers 
carrying human cargoes to market, are most au- 
daciously declared to have been engaged in the 
coasting trade ! The real trade in which these 
vessels were engaged, was 

The American Slave Trade under the pro- 
tection AND REGULATION OF THE FEDERAL 

Government. 

We shall first exhibit the character and extent 
of this trade, and then show that it is in fact car- 



64 AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

ried on under the protection and regulation of the 
Federal Government. 

The competition of free with slave labour in 
the bread stuffs and some other productions of 
Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, have 
greatly reduced the value of slaves as labourers 
in those States ; and hence the disposition mani- 
fested there some years since, to get rid of this 
unprofitable portion of their population. But the 
rapid extension of the cotton and sugar cultivation 
in the extreme South, together with the settle- 
ment of the new States of Alabama, Mississippi' 
Missouri, and Arkansas, occasioned a prodigious 
demand for slaves ; and the agriculturists of Vir- 
ginia and the neighbouring States discovered that 
their most lucrative occupation was that of raising 
live stock for the southern and western markets. 
In Georgia and South Carolina, it has also been 
found more advantageous to export their supernu- 
meraries to Mobile, New-Orleans, or Natchez, than 
to employ them on their already well-stocked 
plantations. Hence has grown up an almost in- 
credible transfer of slaves from the North to the 
South ; and recently a new market has been 
opened in Texas, giving an additional stimulus to 
the trade. It is impossible to ascertain the exact 
amount of this trade, as the Secretary of the 



AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 65 

Treasury in his annual report on the commercial 
statistics of the United States, has never included 
any statements respecting this branch of the 
"coasting trade." But indeed, the returns from 
the several Custom-Houses of the size and value 
of the human cargoes cleared for the southern 
ports, if given, would afford a very inadequate idea 
of the extent of the traffic, since it is carried on 
by land as well as by sea. Whole coffles of chained 
slaves are driven long and painful journeys in the 
interior of the Republic, much in the same man- 
ner as in the wilds of Africa. The Rev. Mr. 
Dickey, in a published letter thus describes a coffle 
he met on the road in Kentucky : — "I discovered 
about forty black men all chained together in the 
following manner : each of them was handcuffed, 
and they were arranged in rank and file ; a chain 
perhaps forty feet long was stretched between 
two ranks, to which short chains were joined, 
which connected with the handcuffs. Behind 
them were, I suppose, thirty women in double rank, 
the couples tied hand to hand." 

J. K. Paulding, the present Secretary of the 
Navy, gives the following picture of a scene he 
witnessed in Virginia : 

"The sun was shining out very hot, and in 
turning an angle of the road we encountered the 
6* 



66 AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

following group : first, a little cart drawn by one 
horse, in which five or six half naked black chil- 
dren were tumbled like pigs together. The cart 
had no covering, and they seemed to have been 
actually broiled to sleep. Behind the cart marched 
three black women, with head, neck and breasts, 
uncovered, and without shoes or stockings ; next 
came three men, bareheaded, half naked, and 
chained together with an ox chain. Last of all 
came a white man — a white man, Frank ! — on 
horseback, carrying pistols in his belt, and who, 
as we passed him, had the impudence to look us 
in the face without blushing. I should like to 
have seen him hunted by blood-hounds. At a 
house where we stopped a little further on, we 
learned that he had bought these miserable beings 
in Maryland, and was marching them in this man- 
ner to some of the more southern States. Shame 
on the State of Maryland ! I say — and shame on 
the State of Virginia ! and every State through 
which this wretched cavalcade w r as permitted to 
pass. Do they expect that such exhibitions will 
not dishonour them in the eyes of strangers, how- 
ever they may be reconciled to them by education 
and habit ?"* 

+ " Letters from the South, written during an excursion in the 
Summer of 1816." New- York, IS 17. Vol. I. Letter XI. p. 117. 



AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 67 

As we are about to enter into particulars re- 
specting the American slave trade, it may not be 
uninteresting to inquire who are its victims? 
They are native-born Americans. But of what 
colour and descent? This will no doubt be deemed 

It may be thought by some that the elevation to a seat in the 
Cabinet, of a gentleman who expresses himself with so much 
warmth and fearlessness against one of the " peculiar institutions 
of the South," militates against our idea that the influence of the 
Federal Government is exerted in behalf of slavery. Singular as 
it may appear, the appointment of Mr. Paulding is nevertheless 
strongly corroborative of the opinion we have advanced ; and the 
explanation is at once easy and amusing. The " Letters from 
the South'' were reprinted in 1835, and form the fifth and sixth 
volumes of an edition of "Paulding's Works." The letter from 
which we have quoted consists of fourteen pages, devoted to the 
subject of slavery. On turning to the corresponding letter in the 
recent edition we find it shrunk to three pages, containing no allu- 
sion to the internal trade, nor any thing else that could offend the 
most sensitive Southerner. In the nineteenth letter as printed in 
1817, there is not a word about slavery. In the same letter as 
published in 1835, we meet with the following most wonderful 
prediction; a prediction that has lately been cited in the newspa- 
pers as a proof of the sagacity and foresight of the Secretary of 
the Navy : — 

" The second cause of disunion will be found in the slave pop- 
ulation of the South, whenever the misguided, or wilfully malig- 
nant zeal of the advocates of emancipation, shall institute as it one 
day doubtless xoill, a crusade against the constitutional rights of 
the slave owners, by sending among them fanatical agents and 
fanatical tracts, calculated to render the slaves disaffected, and 
the situation of the master and his family dangerous ; when ap- 



68 AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

by many a very unnecessary question ; and no 
little indignation will probably be excited when 
we answer that large numbers of these victims 
are white men and women, and the children of 
American citizens. 

peals shall be made under the sanction of religion to the passions 
of these ignorant and excited blacks, calculated and intended to 
rouse their worst and most dangerous passions, and to place the 
very lives of their masters, their wives, and their children, in the 
deepest peril ; when societies are formed in the sister States for the 
avowed purpose of virtually destroying the value of this principa 
item in the property of a southern planter ; when it becomes a 
question mooted in the legislatures of the States, or of the gene- 
ral government, whether the rights of the master over his slave 
shall be any longer recognized or maintained, and when it is at 
last evident that nothing will preserve them but secession, then 
will certain of the Stars of our beautiful constellation' start madly 
from their spheres and jostle the others in their wild career.'" 

In the title of the new edition, the date of the " excursion" is 
modestly omitted, but the reader is not informed that the spirit of 
prophecy descended upon the writer, not while journeying at the 
South, but while witnessing in New- York the operations of the 
predicted societies, and after the city had been convulsed by the 
abolition riots. 

In 1836, Mr. Paulding published his "Slavery in the United 
States." In this work both the Old and the New Testament are 
made to give their sanction to slavery. Great Britain, in abolish- 
ing slavery in the West Indies, is charged with having "committed 
robbery under cover of humanity." — (p. 51.) "A community 
of free blacks rising among the ruins of States, lords of the soil, 
smoking with the habitations and blood of their exterminated 
masters and families," would we are assured be only fulfilling " the 



WHITE SLAVES. 09 

People at the North are disposed to be incred- 
ulous, when they hear of white slaves at the 
South ; and yet a little reflection would convince 
them not only that there must be such slaves un- 
der the present system, but that in process of 
time, a large proportion of the slaves will be as 
white as their masters. Were there no other 
sources of information respecting the complexions 
of the southern slaves, the newspaper notices of 
runaways would most abundantly confirm our as- 
sertion. Of these notices, we give the following 
as samples. 

"$100 Reward. — The above reward will be 
paid for the apprehension of my man William. 

wishes" of the abolitionists. — (p. 56.) The advocates of immedi- 
ate emancipation recommend it as asserted, "indiscriminate mar- 
riages between the whites and blacks:" — (p.61.) and well educated 
respectable females amongst them are apparently anxious "to be- 
come the mothers of mulattoes." — (p. 62.) Slavery we are told "is 
becoming gradually divested of all its harsh features, and is now 
only the bugbear of the imagination :" — (p. 26.) and Mr. Paulding 
affirms — " In a residence of several years within the District, and 
a pretty extensive course of travel in some of the southern States, 
(the excursion in the summer of 1816, we suppose,) we never saw 
or heard of any such instances of cruelty. — We sav; no chains, ( !) 
and heard no stripes." — (p. 168.) 

We trust our readers are now fully convinced of this gentle- 
man's qualifications for the office of Secretary of the Navy, and of 
Mr. Van Buren's consistency in appointing him. 



70 AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

He is a very bright mulatto — straight yellowish 
hair. 1 have no doubt he will change his name, 
and try to pass himself for a WHITE MAN, 
which he may be able to do, unless to a close ob- 
server. T. S. PlCHARD." 
August 9. 

"8100 Reward. — Ranaway from James Hy- 
hart, Paris, Kentucky, on the 29th June last, the 
mulatto boy Norton, about fifteen years, a very 
bright mulatto, and would be taken for a WHITE 
BOY, if not closely examined. His hair is black 
and straight, &c. — New-Orleans True American, 
llth August, 1836." 

"$100 Reward — Will be given for the appre- 
hension of my negro (!) Edmund Kenney. He 
has straight hair, and complexion so nearly 
WHITE, that it is believed a stranger would 
suppose there was no African blood in him. He 
was with my boy Dick a short time since in Nor- 
folk, and offered him for sale, and was appre- 
hended, but escaped under pretence of being a 
WHITE MAN. 

Anderson Bowles. 

Richmond Whig, 6th January, 1836." 

"$50 Reward will be given for the apprehension 
and delivery to me of the following slaves : Sam- 



WHITE SLAVES. 71 

uel, and Judy his wife, with their four children, be- 
longing to the estate of S acker Dubberly, dec'd. 

I will give $10 for the apprehension of William 
Dubberly, a slave belonging to the estate. Wil- 
liam is about 19 years old, QUITE WHITE, 
and would not readily be mistaken for a slave. 

John T. Lane. 

Newbern Spectator, ISth March, 1837." 

"$100 Reward. — Ranavvay from the subscri- 
ber, a bright mulatto man slave, named Sam. 
Light sandy hair, blue eyes, ruddy complexion — 
is so WHITE as very easily to pass for a free 
WHITE MAN. 

Edwin Peck. 

Mobile, April 22, 1837." 

" $50 Reward. — I will give the above reward 
of fifty dollars for the apprehension and securing 
in any jail, so that I get him again, or delivering 
to me in Dandridge, E. Tenn. my mulatto boy 
named Preston, about twenty years old. It is 
supposed he will try to pass as a free WHITE 
MAN. 

John Roper. 

Oct. 12, 1838." 

" Ranaway from the subscriber, working on the 
plantation of Col. H. Tinker, a bright mulatto 



72 AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

boy named Alfred. Alfred is about IS years of 
age, pretty well grown, has blue eyes, light flaxen 
hair, skin disposed to freckle. He will try to pass 
as FREE BORN. 

S. G. Stewart. 
Green County, Alabama." 

Mr. Paxton, a Virginia writer, tells us in his 
work on slavery, that " the best blood in Virginia 
flows in the veins of the slaves." 

Dr. Torrey, in his work on domestic slavery in 
the United States, p. 14, says: "While at a pub- 
lic house in Fredericktown, there came into the 
bar-room on Sunday, a decently dressed white 
man, of quite a light complexion, in company 
with one who was totally black. After they went 
away, the landlord observed that the white man 
was a slave. I asked him with some surprise how 
that could be possible? To which he replied, 
that he was a descendant, by female ancestry, of 
an African slave. He also stated that not far 
from Fredericktown, there was a slave estate on 
which there were several white females, as of fair 
and elegant appearance as white ladies in gene- 
ral, held in legal bondage as slaves ! /" 

A Missouri paper, reporting the trial of a slave 
boy, remarks : " All the physiological marks of dis- 



WHITE SLAVES. 73 

tinction which characterize the African descent, 
had disappeared. His skin was fair, his hair soft, 
straight, fine and white, his eyes blue, but rather 
disposed to the hazel-nut colour, nose prominent^ 
the lips small and well formed, forehead high and 
prominent." 

In the summer of 1835, a slaveholder from Ma- 
ryland arrested as his fugitive, a young woman in 
Philadelphia. A trial ensued, when it was most 
conclusively proved that the alleged slave, Mary 
Gilmore, was the child of poor Irish parents, and 
had not a drop of African blood in her veins. 

A paper printed at Louisville, Ky. the "Em- 
porium," relates a circumstance that occurred in 
that city, in the following terms. " A laudable 
indignation was universally manifested among our 
citizens on Saturday last, by the exposure of a 
woman and two children for sale at public auc- 
tion, at the front of our principal tavern. The 
woman and children were as white as any of 
our citizens ; indeed, we scarcely every saw a 
child with a fairer or clearer complexion than 
the younger one." — Niles's Register, June, 1821. 

Mr. Niles tells us in his Register, that Mr. Cal- 
houn, the late Vice President, had related to him 
the case of a man " placed on the stand for sale 
as a slave, whose appearance in all respects gave 
7 



74 AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE, 

him a better claim to the character of a WHITE 
MAN than most persons so acknowledged could 
show/' — Register, 25th Oct. 1834. 

We will now attempt to give the reader some 
idea of the extent of the trade — a trade in which 
human beings of every shade, from the purest 
white to the deepest black, are made articles cf 
merchandise, and treated with cruelty little if any 
less than that which has made the African slave- 
trade the execration of the civilized world. 

" Dealing in slaves/' says the Baltimore Regis- 
ter, " has become a large business ; establishments 
are made in several places in Maryland and Vir- 
ginia, at which they are sold like cattle : these 
places of deposit are strongly built, and well sup- 
plied with iron thumb- screws and gags, and or- 
namented with cowskins and other whips, often- 
times bloody." 

The advertisements of the Baltimore traders 
show T that the Maryland Colonization Society, in 
their endeavours to suppress the slave trade, may 
find a field for their labours less distant than the 
Coast of Africa. We annex some samples. 

"Austin Woodfolh of Baltimore, wishes to in- 
form the slaveholders of Maryland and Virginia, 
that their friend still lives to give cash and the 
highest price for negroes," &c. 



MARYLAND. 75 

"General Slave Agency Office, — Gentlemen 
planters from the South and others who wish to 
purchase negroes, would do well to give me a 
call. Lewis Scott." 

" Cash for two hundred Negroes. — The high- 
est cash prices will be paid for negroes of both 
sexes, by application to me or my agent at 
Booth's Garden. Hope H. Slater." 

" For New-Orleans. — A coppered, copper-fas- 
tened packet-brig Isaac Franklin, will sail on the 
1st Feb. for Baltimore. Those having servants 
to sltip will do well by making early application 
to James F. Purvis," &c. 

Human flesh is now the great staple of Vir- 
ginia. In the Legislature of this State in 1832 
Thomas Jefferson Randolph declared that Vir- 
ginia had been converted into "one grand menage- 
rie, where men are reared for the market like oxen 
for the shambles." This same gentleman thus com- 
pared the foreign with the domestic traffic. "The 
trader (African) receives the slaves, a stranger in 
aspect, language, and manner, from the merchant 
who brought him from the interior. But here, sir 
individuals whom the master has known from in- 
fancy — whom he has seen sporting in the inno- 
cent gambols of childhood — who have been ac- 



76 AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

customed to look to him for protection, he tears 
from the mother's arms, and sells into a strange 
country, among a strange people, subject to cruel 
taskmasters. In my opinion it is much worse.' 1 

Mr. C. F. Mercer asserted in the Virginia 
Convention of 1829, " The tables of the natural 
growth of the slave population demonstrate, when 
compared with the increase of its numbers in the 
Commonwealth for twenty years past, that an 
annual revenue of not less than a million and a 
half of dollars is derived from the exportation of 
a part of this population." — Debates, p. 99. 

Professor E. A. Andrews gives a conversation 
he had with a trader on board a steam-boat on 
the Potamac, in 1835. "In selling his slaves, 

N assures me he never separates families ; 

but that in purchasing them he is often compelled 
to do so, for that his business is to purchase, and 
he must take such as are in the market. Do 
you often buy the wife without the husband ? 
Yes, very often ; and frequently, too, they sell 
me the mother, while they keep the children. I 
have often known them take away the infant from 
the mother's breast, and keep it, while they sold her. 
Children from one to eighteen months old, are 
now worth about one hundred dollars." ' 

* Slavery and the domestic slave trade in the United States, p. 
417. 



VIRGINIA. 77 

The town of Petersburg in Virginia, seems to 
onjoy a large share of this commerce, judging 
from the advertisements of its merchants. 

" Cash for Negroes. — The subscribers are par- 
ticularly anxious to make a shipment of negroes 
shortly. All persons who have slaves to part 
with, will do well to call as soon as possible. 
Overly & Saunders." 

" The subscriber being desirous of making an- 
other shipment by the Brig Adelaide to New-Or- 
leans, on the first of March, will give a good mar- 
ket price for fifty negroes from ten to thirty years 
old. Henry Davis." 

" The subscriber wishes to purchase one hun- 
dred slaves, of both sexes, from the age of ten to 
thirty, for which he is disposed to give much 
higher prices than have heretofore been given. 
He will call on those living in the adjacent coun- 
ties to see any property. 

Ansley Davis." 

But of all the Virginia merchants, Mr. Collier 
of Richmond, seems to be the most enterprising. 
We give extracts from his 

"Notice. — This is to inform my former ac- 

7* 



78 AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

quaintances, and the public generally, that I yet 
continue in the SLAVE TRADE, at Richmond, 
Virginia, and will at all times buy and give a 
fair market price for young negroes. Persons in 
this State, Maryland, or North Carolina, wishing 
to sell lots of negroes, are particularly requested 
to forward their wishes to me at this place. Per- 
sons wishing to purchase lots of negroes, are re- 
quested to give me a call, as I keep constantly 
on hand at this place, a great many for sale ; and 
have at this time the use of one hundred young 
negroes, consisting of boys, young men, and girls. 
I will sell at all times at a small advance on cost, 
to suit purchasers. I have comfortable rooms 
with a jail attached, for the reception of the ne- 
groes ; and persons coming to this place to sell 
slaves, can be accommodated, and every attention 
necessary will be given to have them well attended 
to ; and when it may be desired, the reception of 
the company of gentlemen dealing in slaves, will 
conveniently and attentively be received. My 
situation is very healthy and suitable for the bu- 
siness. Lewis A. Collier." 

Joseph Wood of Hamburg, South Carolina, a 
" gentleman dealing in slaves," advertises that he 



VIRGINIA. 79 

"has on hand a likely parcel of Virginia negroes 
and receives new supplies every fifteen days." 

And what are the pecuniary results of this 
commerce ? Mr. Mercer, as we have seen, esti. 
mated the annual revenue to Virginia from the 
export of human flesh, at one million and a half 
of dollars. But this was in 1829, before the 
trade had reached its present palmy state. "The 
Virginia Times," in 1836, in an article on the im- 
portance of increasing the banking capital of the 
Commonwealth, estimates the number of slaves 
exported for sale the " last twelve months," at 
forty thousand ; each slave averaging six hun- 
dred dollars, and thus yielding a capital of twen- 
ty-four millions, of which the Editor thinks, at 
least thirteen millions might be contributed for 
banking purposes.* 

Let us now visit the " Metropolis of the Na- 
tion," the very heart of this mighty commerce in 
the bodies and souls of men. The District of Co- 
lumbia, from its relative situation to the breeding 
States, forms a convenient depot for the negroes, 
previous to their exportation ; and the non-inter- 
ference of Congress, gives the traders "under the 
exclusive jurisdiction " of the Federal Govern- 
ment, as unlimited power over the treatment and 

* JNiles's Register. 



80 AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

stowage of their human cargoes, as their brethren 
enjoy, on the coast of Guinea. 

Hence large establishments have grown up up- 
on the national domain, provided with prisons for 
the safe-keeping of the negroes till a full cargo 
is procured ; and should at any time the factory 
prisons be insufficient, the public ones, erected by 
Congress, are at the service of the dealers, and 
the United States Marshal becomes the agent of 
the slave trader ! 

It must be admitted, that the following pictures 
of the scenes witnessed in the District of Colum- 
bia, are drawn by impartial hands. So long ago 
as 1802, the grand jury of Alexandria complain- 
ing of the trade, remarked : " These dealers in the 
persons of our fellow-men, collect within this dis- 
trict from various parts, numbers of these victims 
of slavery, and lodge them in some place of con- 
finement until they have completed their numbers. 
They are then turned out into our streets, and ex- 
posed to view loaded with chains, as though they 
had committed some heinous offence against our 
laws. We consider it as a grievance that citizens 
from a distant part of the United States, should 
be permitted to come within the District, and 
pursue a traffic fraught with so much misery to a 
class of beings entitled to our protection, by the 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 81 

laws of justice and humanity ; and that the inter- 
position of civil authority cannot be had to pre- 
vent parents being wrested from their offspring, 
and children from their parents, without respect 
to the ties of nature. We consider these griev- 
ances demanding legislative redress:" — that is, 
redress by Congress. 

In 1816, Judge Morell of the Circuit Court of 
the United States, in his charge to the grand jury 
of Washington, observed, speaking of the slave 
trade : " The frequency with which the streets of 
the city had been crowded with manacled captives, 
sometimes on the Sabbath, could not fail to shock 
the feelings of all humane persons." 

The same year, John Randolph moved in the 
House of Representatives for a committee "to in- 
quire into the existence of an inhuman and ille- 
gal traffic of slaves carried on, in, and through the 
District of Columbia, and report whether any or 
what measures are necessary for putting a stop 
to the same." The motion was adopted ; had it 
been made twenty years later, it would under the 
rules of the House, have been laid on the table. 
" and no further action had thereon." 

The Alexandria Gazette of June 22nd, 1827, 
thus describes the scenes sanctioned by our pro- 
fessedly republican and Christian Legislature : 



82 AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

" Scarcely a week passes without some of these 
wretched creatures being driven through our 
streets. After having been confined, and some- 
times manacled in a loathsome prison, they are 
turned out in public view to take their departure 
for the South. The children and some of the 
women are generally crowded into a cart or wag- 
on, while others follow on foot, not unfrequently 
handcuffed and chained together. Here you may 
behold fathers and brothers leaving behind them 
the dearest objects of affection, and moving slowly 
along in the mute agony of despair — there the 
young mother sobbing over the infant whose in- 
nocent smiles seem but to increase her misery. 
From some you will hear the burst of bitter la- 
mentation, while from others, the loud hysteric 
laugh breaks forth, denoting still deeper agony." 

In 1828, a petition for the suppression of this 
trade was presented to Congress, signed by more 
than one thousand inhabitants of this District. 

In 1829, the Grand Jury of Washington made 
a communication to Congress, in which they say, 
" Provision ought to be made to prevent purcha- 
sers for the purpose of removal and transporta- 
tion, from making the cities of the District, depots 
for the imprisonment of the slaves they collect. 
The manner in which they are brought and con- 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 83 

fined in these places, and carried through our 
streets, is necessarily such as to excite the most 
painful feelings. It is believed that the whole 
community would be gratified by the interference 
of Congress for the suppression of these recepta- 
cles, and the exclusion of this disgusting traffic 
from the District." 

In 1830, the "Washington Spectator" thus 
gave vent to its indignation. 

" The slave trade in the Capital. — Let it be 
known to the citizens of America, that at the very 
time when the procession which contained the 
President of the United States and his Cabinet 
was marching in triumph to the Capitol, another 
kind of procession was marching another way ; 
and that consisted of coloured human beings, 
hand-cuffed in pairs, and driven along by what 
had the appearance of a man on horseback ! A 
similar scene was repeated on Saturday last ; a 
drove consisting of males and females, chained in 
couples, starting from Holy's tavern on foot for 
Alexandria, where with others they are to em- 
bark on board a slave ship in waiting to convey 
them to the South. Where is the O'Connell in 
this Republic that will plead for the emancipation 
of the District of Columbia ?" 

The advertisements of the dealers, indicate the 



84 AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

extent of the traffic. The National Intelligencer 
of the 28th March, 1836, printed at Washington, 
contained the following advertisements. 

" Cash for jive hundred Negroes, including both 
sexes, from ten to twenty-five years of age. Per- 
sons having likely servants to dispose of, will 
find it their interest to give us a call, as we will 
give higher prices in cash, than any other purcha- 
ser who is now or may hereafter come into the 

MARKET. 

Franklin & Amfield, Alexandria." 

" Cash for three hundred Negroes. — The high- 
est cash price will be given by the subscriber, 
for negroes of both sexes, from the ages of twelve 
to twenty-eight. 

William H. Williams, Washington." 

" Cash for four hundred Negroes, including 
both sexes, from twelve to twenty-five years of 
age. 

James II. Birch, Washington City." 

" Cash for Negroes. — We will at all times 
give the highest prices in cash for likely young 
negroes of both sexes, from ten to thirty years 
of age. J. W. Neal & Co. Washington." 



AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 85 

Here we find three traders in the District, ad- 
vertising in one day for twelve hundred negroes, 
and a fourth offering to buy an indefinite num- 
ber. 

In a later number of the Intelligencer, we find 
the following. 

" Cash for Negroes. — I will give the highest 
price for likely negroes from ten to twenty-five 
years of age. George Kephart." 

" Cash for Negroes. — I will give cash and 
liberal prices for any number of young and likely 
negroes, from eight to forty years of age. Persons 
having negroes to dispose of will find it to their 
advantage to give me a call at my residence on 
the corner of Seventh-street and Maryland Ave- 
nue, and opposite Mr. William's private jail. 

William H. Richards." 

u Cash for Negroes. — The subscriber wishes 
to purchase a number of negroes for the Louisia- 
na and Mississippi market. Himself or an agent 
at all times can be found at his jail, on Seventh- 
street. Wm. H. Williams." 

The unhappy beings purchased by these tra- 
ders in human flesh, men and women, and chil- 
dren of eight years old, are sent to the South, 
8 



86 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 

either over land in coffles, or by sea, in crowded 
slavers. Fostered by Congress, these traders lose 
all sense of shame ; and we have in the National 
Intelligencer, the following announcement of the 
regular departure of three slavers, belonging to a 
single factory. 

" Alexandria and New-Orleans Packets. — Brig 
Tribune, Samuel C. Bush, master, will sail as 
above on the 1st January — Brig Isaac Franklin, 
Wm. Smith, master, on the 15th January — Brig 
Uncas, Nath. Boush, master, on the 1st February. 
They will continue to leave this port on the 1st 
and 15th of each month, throughout the shipping 
season. Servants that are intended to he shipped, 
will at any time he received for safe-keeping at 
twenty-five cents a day. 

John Amfield, Alexandria." 

This infamous advertisement of the regular 
sailing of three slavers, and the offer of the use of 
the factory prison, appears in one of the principal 
journals of the United States. Its proprietor has 
several times been chosen printer to Congress, 
and there is no reason for believing that he has 
ever lost the vote of a northern member for this 
prostitution of his columns. 

But the climax of infamy is still untold. This 



AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 87 

trade inblood ; this buying, imprisoning, and export- 
ing of boys and girls eight years old ; this tearing 
asunder of husbands and wives, parents and chil- 
dren, is all legalized in virtue of authority delega- 
ted by Congress ! ! The 240th page of the laws 
of the city of Washington, is polluted by the follow- 
ing enactment, bearing date 28th July, 1831. 

" For a license to trade or traffic in slaves for 
profit, four hundred dollars." 

Such is the character and extent of the Amer- 
ican slave trade, impudently and wickedly called 
by the Senate, "the coasting trade/' — a trade 
protected and regulated by the very government 
which in the Treaty of Ghent, with wonderful 
assurance, declared that "the traffic in slaves is 
irreconcileable with the principles of justice and 
humanity." 

The government may be fairly said to protect 
the trade, when it refuses to exercise its constitu- 
tional power to suppress it. The very fact that 
slave traders arelicensed in the District, is a full and 
complete acknowledgement that there is authority 
competent to forbid their nefarious business. The 
continuance of the traffic under the immediate 
and " exclusive jurisdiction" of the National Gov- 
ernment, stamps with sin and disgrace every 
member of Congress who assents to it ; and more 



88 AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

especially, and with peculiar infamy, those north- 
ern members who, for party purposes, vote that 
"Congress ought not in any way to interfere with 
slavery in the District of Columbia." 

But we are constantly told by the apologists of 
slavery that the American slave trade is beyond 
the constitutional control of the Federal Govern- 
ment ; yet that government abolished the African 
slave trade, and no human being ever questioned 
its right to do so ? But whence was that right 
derived ? Solely from the 8th Sec. of the 1st Art. 
of the Constitution, viz: — 

" Congress shall have power to regulate com- 
merce with foreign nations, and among the several 
States." 

In virtue of this delegation of power, Congress 
has made it a capital crime to carry on commerce 
in African slaves. Now that this legislative pro- 
hibition of the traffic is constitutional, is proved by 
the highest possible authority, even the Constitu- 
tion itself; for that instrument, after giving Con- 
gress power to regulate commerce with foreign 
nations, restricts it from abolishing the African 
slave trade before the expiration of twenty years.* 

* The phraseology of this restriction shows that it was intended 
to limit the power to regulate commerce as well "among the sevc- 



AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 89 

To regulate, we are told, does not include the 
power to destroy ; yet it seems the power to 
regulate commerce with foreign nations does in- 
clude the power to interdict an odious, cruel, and 
wicked branch of it. By what logic then will it 
be shown that the power to regulate the commerce 
among the several States, does not include the 
power to interdict a traffic in men, women, and 
children? Is it more wicked, more base, more 
cruel, to traffic in African savages than in native 
born Americans — in white men, and women and 
children — in the offspring of our own citizens, 
and not unfrequently, of very distinguished citi- 
zens? Yet it is this abominable commerce that 
our government fosters and protects. We have 
seen its watchful guardianship over this trade in 
its unceasing endeavours to obtain compensation 
from Great Britain for 287 slaves thrown by the 
winds and waves under her protection. Mr. Van 

ral States" as with foreign nations. " The migration, or importa- 
tion of such persons as any of the existing States shall think 
proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to 
the year one thousand eight hundred and eight." — (Art. I. Sec. 9.) 
If any State should think proper to admit slaves migrating from 
another State, it was not to be restrained from doing so till 1808. 
If it should think proper to import slaves from a foreign country, 
it might do so notwithstanding the wishes of Congress, till the 
same period. 

8* 



90 



AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 



Buren, our Minister in England, in an official note 
on this subject, (Feb. 25, 1832,) remarked : — 

" The Government of the United States respect- 
ing the actual and unavoidable condition of things 
at home, while it most sedulously and rigorously 
guards against the further introduction of slaves, 
protects at the same time by reasonable laws the 
rights of the owners of that species of property in 
the States w T here it exists, and permits its transfer 
coastwise from one of these States to another,under 
suitable restrictions to prevent the fraudulent intro- 
duction of foreign slaves." 

By the act of Congress of 2d March, 1807, 
masters of vessels under 40 tons burthen, are for- 
bidden to transport coastwise from one port to 
another in the United States any person of colour 
to be sold or held as a slave, under the penalty of 
8800 for each slave so transported. 

By the same act, masters of vessels, over 40 tons 
burthen sailing coastwise from one port to another, 
and intending to transport persons of colour to be 
sold or held as slaves, must first make out duplicate 
manifests, specifying the names, sex, age, and stat- 
ure, of the persons transported, and the names 
and residence of their owner or shipper. These 
manifests are to be delivered to the collector of 
the port who is to retain one, and to return the 



DUPLICITY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 91 

other to the master with " a permit" endorsed on 
it, " authorizing him to proceed to the port of des- 
tination." If the master presumes to transport a 
slave without such permit, not only is the vessel 
forfeited, but the master is to pay a penalty of 
$1000 for each slave shipped. On the arrival of 
the vessel at the port of destination, the manifest, 
with the permit, is to be handed to the collector, 
who thereupon is to grant a "permit" for the land- 
ing of the slaves, and if any are landed without 
such permit, the master forfeits one thousand dol- 
lars. So it seems Congress may prohibit the slave 
trade in vessels under forty tons ; but according 
to northern politicians, it would be unconstitutional 
to prohibit it in vessels over forty tons ; and ac- 
cording to the slaveholders, such a prohibition 
would cause the dissolution of the Union ! But 
alas ! the permission, regulation, and protection of 
this traffic is in perfect keeping with 

The duplicity of the Federal Government 
in regard to the suppression of the afri- 
can slave trade. 

The great struggle for the abstract principles of 
human liberty, in which our fathers engaged with 
so much zeal, had, at the close of the revolutionary 



92 DUPLICITY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 

war, excited a very general conviction of the in- 
justice of slavery. When the convention appointed 
to form a Federal Constitution assembled, the 
northern and many of the southern delegates were 
disposed to give the new government such unquali- 
fied power over the commerce of the nation, as 
would enable it to abolish a traffic no less at vari- 
ance with our republican professions than with the 
precepts of humanity and religion. A portion of 
the southern delegates however, insisted on a tem- 
porary restriction of this power as the price of 
their adhesion to the Union ; and their threat of 
marring the beauty, symmetry, and strength of 
the fair fabric about to be erected by withdraw- 
ing from it the support of the States they represent- 
ed, unfortunately induced the convention to yield to 
their wishes, and to insert in the constitution a 
clause restraining Congress from abolishing the 
African slave trade for twenty years. Mr. Madi- 
son has left us the following history of this iniqui- 
tous clause. "The southern States would not 
have entered into the union of America without 
the temporary permission of that trade. The 
gentlemen from South Carolina and Georgia, ar- 
gued in this manner — 'We have now liberty to 
import this species of property, and much of the 
property now possessed has been purchased, or 



DUPLICITY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 93 

otherwise acquired in contemplation of improving 
it by the assistance of imported slaves. What 
would be the consequence of hindering us from 
it ? The slaves of Virginia would rise in value 
and we should be obliged to go to your markets/ " 
— Debates in Virginia Convention. 

We have here the solution of much contradictory 
action on the part of slaveholders in regard to 
this trade. It seems to have been early discovered 
that its abolition would be advantageous to the 
slave-breeders, but not to the slave buyers. Ow- 
ing to climate, soil, and productions, slave labour 
is less profitable in Maryland and Virginia, than 
in the more southern States ; hence, the greater 
demand for this labour in the latter States has, 
since the cessation of importation, caused a con- 
stant influx of slaves from the former. The breed- 
ers in Maryland and Virginia have, for the most 
part, striven in good faith for the total suppression 
of the African trade ; while those who originally 
refused to enter the Union unless permitted for at 
least twenty years, to import their slaves directly 
from Africa, have since evinced very little desire 
to secure to their neighbours the monopoly of the 
market. 

Whenever the opponents of Abolition find it 
convenient to refer to the action of the Federal 



94 DUPLICITY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 

Government on the subject of slavery, they laud 
and magnify its horror of the African slave trade, 
and exultingly point to the law of Congress, brand- 
ing it with the penalties of piracy. And yet we 
are inclined to believe, that the conduct of our 
government in relation to this very subject, is one 
of the foulest stains attached to our national ad- 
ministration. Has the trade been suppressed ? 
Has the Federal Government in good faith endeav- 
oured to suppress it? These are important ques- 
tions, and we shall endeavour to solve them by an 
appeal to facts and official documents. 

In a debate in Congress in 1819, Mr. Middle- 
ton of South Carolina, stated, that in his opinion, 
13,U00 Africans were annually smuggled into the 
United States. Mr. Wright of Virginia, estima- 
ted the number at 15,000 ! The same year, Judge 
Story of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
in a charge to a Grand Jury, thus expresses him- 
self: — " We have but too many proofs from un- 
questionable sources, that it (the African trade) is 
still carried on with all the implacable ferocity 
and insatiable rapacity of former times. Avarice 
has grown more subtle in its evasions, and watch- 
es and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened 
rather than suppressed by its guilty vigils. Ame- 
rican citizens are steeped to their very mouths, (I 



DUPLICITY OF TIIE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 95 

can scarcely use too bold a figure,) in this stream 
of iniquity." 

On the 22d Jan. 1811, the Secretary of the 
Navy wrote to the commanding naval officer at 
Charleston. " I hear, not without great concern, 
that the law prohibiting the importation of slaves, 
has been violated infrequent instances, near St. 
Mary's, since the gun-boats have been withdrawn 
from that station." 

On the 14th March, 1814, the Collector of Da- 
rien, Georgia, thus wrote to the Secretary of the 
Treasury: — "I am in possession of undoubted 
information, that African and West India negroes 
are almost daily illicitly introduced into Georgia, 
for sale or settlement, or passing through it to the 
territories of the United States, for similar pur- 
poses. These facts are notorious, and it is not 
unusual to see such negroes in the streets of St. 
Mary, and such too, recently captured by our ves- 
sels of war, and ordered for Savannah, were il- 
legally bartered by hundreds in that city, for this 
bartering (or bonding, as it is called, but in reality 
selling,) actually took place before any decision 
has passed by the Court respecting them. I can- 
not but again express to you, sir, that these irreg- 
ularities, and mocking of the laws by men who 
understand them, are such that it requires the 



96 DUPLICITY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 

immediate interposition of Congress to effect the 
suppression of this traffic ; for as things are, should 
a faithful officer of the Government apprehend 
such negroes, to avoid the penalties imposed by 
the laws, the proprietors disclaim them, and some 
agent of the Executive demands a delivery of the 
same to him, who may employ them as he pleases, 
or effect a sale by way of bond for the restoration 
of the negroes when legally called on so to do, 
which bond is understood to be forfeited, as the 
amount of the bond is so much less than the value 
of the property. After much fatigue, peril, and 
expense, eighty-eight Africans are seized and 
brought to the Surveyor to Darien ; they are de- 
manded by the Governor's agent. Notwithstand- 
ing the knowledge which his Excellency had that 
these very Africans were some weeks within six 
miles of his Excellency's residence, there was no 
effort, no stir made by him, his agents or subor- 
dinate State officers, to carry the laws into exe- 
cution ; but no sooner than it was understood that 
a seizure had been effected by an officer of the 
United States, a demand is made for them ; and 
it is not difficult to perceive, that the very aggres- 
sors may, by a forfeiture of the mock bond, be 
again placed in possession of the smuggled prop- 
erty." 



IMPORTATION OF AFRICANS. 97 

In 1817, General David B. Mitchell, Governor 
of Georgia, resigned the Executive chair, and ac- 
cepted the appointment under the Federal Gov- 
ernment, of Indian Agent at the Creek Agency. 
He was afterwards charged with being concerned 
in the winter of 1817 and 1818, in the illegal im- 
portation of Africans. The documents in support 
of the charge, and those also which he offered to 
disprove it, were placed by the President in the 
hands of Mr. Wirt, the Attorney General of the 
United States, who on the 21st January, 1821, 
made a report on the same. From this report, it 
appears that no less than 94 Africans were smug- 
gled into Georgia, and carried to Mitchell's resi- 
dence. Mr. Wirt concludes his report with the 
expression of his conviction, " that Gen. Mitchell 
is guilty of having prostituted his power as Agent 
for Indian Affairs at the Creek Agency, to the 
purpose of aiding and assisting in a conscious 
breach of the Act of Congress of 1807, in prohi- 
bition of the slave trade, and this from mercenary 
motives."* 

On the 22d M#y, 1817, the Collector at Sa- 
vannah, wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury : 
" I have just received information from a source 
on which I can implicitly rely, that it has already 

* Senatejpapors, 1st Session, 17th Cong. No. 93. 
9 



98 IMPORTATION OF AFRICAN!?, 

become the practice to introduce into the State of 
Georgia across St. Mary's River, from Amelia Isl- 
and, E. Florida, Africans who have been carried in- 
to the port of Ferdinanda. It is further under- 
stood, that the evil will not be confined altogether 
to Africans, but will be extended to the worst 
class of West India slaves. 9 ' 

Captain Morris of the Navy, informed the Sec- 
retary of the Navy, (18th June, 1817) — " Slaves 
are smuggled in through the numerous inlets to 
the westward, where the people are but too much 
disposed to render every possible assistance. Sev- 
eral hundred slaves are now at Galveston, and 
persons have gone from New-Orleans to purchase 
them." 

On the 17th April, 1818, the Collector at New- 
Orleans, wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury ; 
" No efforts of the officers of the Customs alone, 
can be effectual in preventing the introduction of 
Africans from the westward : to put a stop to 
that traffic, a naval force suitable to those waters 
is indispensable ; and vessels captured with slaves 
ought not to be brought into this .port, but to some 
other in the United States, for adjudication." We 
may learn the cause of this significant hint, from 
a communication made the 9th July, in the same 
year, to the Secretary, by the Collector at Nova- 



IMPORTATION OF AFRICANS. 99 

Iberia. "Last summer I got out State warrants, 
and had negroes seized to the number of eigh- 
teen, which were part of them stolen out of the 
custody of the coroner ; the balance were con- 
demned by the District Judge, and the informers 
received their part of the nett proceeds from the 
State Treasurer. Five negroes that were seized 
about the same time, were tried at Opelousa in 
May last, by the same judge. He decided that 
some Spaniards that were supposed to have set 
up a sham claim, stating that the negroes had been 
stolen from them on the high seas, (!!) should have 
the negroes, and that the persons who seized them 
should pay half the costs, and the State of Louisi- 
ana the other. This decision had such an effect 
as to render it almost impossible for me to ob- 
tain any assistance in that part of the country." 

The Secretary of the Treasury, in a letter to 
the Speaker of the House of Representatives, 20th 
January 1819, remarked : — "It is understood that 
proceedings have been instituted under the State 
authorities which have terminated in the sale of 
persons of colour illegally imported into the States 
of Georgia and Louisiana, during the years 1817 
and 1818. There is no authentic copy of the acts 
of the Legislatures of these States upon this sub- 
ject in this department, but it is understood that 



100 IMPORTATION OF AFRICANS. 

in both States, Africans and other persons of 
colour, illegally imported, are directed to be sold 

FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE STATE."* 

We have now, we think, proved from high author- 
ity, that notwithstanding the legal prohibition of the 
slave trade, the people, the courts, and the Execu- 
tive authority in the planting States, have afford- 

*In 1835, the New- York Journal of Commerce asserted that 
vessels had been recently fitted out in that port for the African 
slave trade. 

The Boston Express of 17th December, 1838, thus gives the 
substance of the statements made by Mr. Elliott Cresson, of the 
Pennsylvania Colonization Society, in a public address delivered 
a few days before in Boston : — 

"Out of 177 slave ships which arrive at Cuba every year, five- 
sixths are owned and fitted out from ports in the United States ; 
and the enormous profits accruing from their voyages remitted to 
this country. One house in New- York received lately for its 
share alone the sum of $250,000. Baltimore is largely interested 
in this accursed traffic as well as New- York — and even Boston, 
with all her religion and morality, does not disdain to increase her 
wealth by a participation in so damnable a business. A gentle- 
man of the highest respectability lately informed Mr. Cresson that 
a sailor in this city told him that he had received several hundred 
dollars of hush money to make him keep silent, and when he 
mentioned the names of his employers the gentleman says he was 
actually afraid to repeat them, so high do they stand in society. 
A captain in the merchant service from New- York, was lately 
offered his own terms by two different houses provided he would 
undertake a slave voyage." 

Of the truth of these statements we know nothing. 



IMPUNITY OF TRADERS. 101 

ed facilities for the importation of Africans. It 
now becomes important to inquire how far the 
Federal Government has enforced the penalties 
imposed by the Act forbidding the trade. 

On the 7th January, 1819, Joseph Nourse, Re- 
gister of the Treasury, in an official document 
submitted to Congress, certified that there were 
no records in the Treasury department of any 
forfeitures under the Act of 1807, abolishing the 
slave trade ! So that notwithstanding the thirteen 
or fifteen thousand slaves, said by southern mem- 
bers of Congress to be annually smuggled into the 
United States — notwithstanding American citi- 
zens were deelared by a Judge of the Supreme 
Court to.be " steeped to their very mouths in this 
stream of iniquity," not one single forfeiture had 
in eleven years reached the Treasury of the Uni- 
ted States ! Mr. Nourse, however, states, that it 
was understood that there had been recently two 
forfeitures, one in South Carolina, and the other 
in Alabama. Respecting the first, we have no 
information ; of the latter, we are able to present 
the following extraordinary history. 

The Collector at Mobile, writing Nov. 15, 1818, 
to the Secretary of the Treasury, remarks, " Should 
West Florida be given up to the Spanish authori- 
ties, both the American and Spanish vessels it is 
9* 



102 IMPUNITY OF TRADERS. 

to be apprehended will be employed in the impor- 
tation of slaves with an ultimate destination to 
this country ; and even in its present situation, the 
greatest facilities are afforded for obtaining slaves 
from Havanna and elsewhere through West Flori- 
da. Three vessels, it is true, were taken in the 
attempt last summer, but this was owing rather 
to accident than any well-timed arrangement to 
prevent the trade." 

These three vessels brought in 107 slaves. By 
what mistake they w^ere captured we are not in- 
formed, but another letter from the Collector shows 
us how the " accident " was remedied. " The vessels 
and cargoes and slaves have been delivered on 
bonds; the former to the owners, and the slaves 
to three other persons. The Grand Jury found 
true bills against the owners of the vessels, mas- 
ters and supercargo — all of whom have been dis- 
charged — why or wherefore, I cannot say, except 
that it could not be for want of proof against 
them." From this letter it is most probable that 
the forfeiture of which Mr. Nourse had heard, if 
any in fact occurred, was the collusive forfeiture 
of the Bonds.* 



*The documents we have quoted on this subject, are to be 
found in Reports of Committees. — 1st Scss. 21st Cong. No. 348. 



COLONIZATION. 103 

We most freely acknowledge that so far as the 
statute book is to be received as evidence, there 
can be no question of the sincerity and zeal 
with which the Federal Government has laboured 
to suppress the African slave trade : but laws do 
not execute themselves, and we shall now appeal 
to the statute book, and to the minutes of Con- 
gress, to convict the Government of gross hypoc- 
risy and duplicity. 

It is difficult to understand why men who are 
engaged in breeding slaves for the market, or 
why men who are employed in buying and work- 
ing slaves, should have any moral or religious 
scruples about the African trade ; and when we 
find political leaders professing to be ready to 
sacrifice the Union to secure the perpetuity of 
the American trade, we may surely be excused 
for doubting the sincerity of their denunciations 
against the foreign traffic. 

In the year 1817, a new and sudden zeal was 
excited in Congress for the abolition of the trade, 
and this zeal as we shall see, was the offspring of 
the efforts of Virginia to colonize the free blacks. 
The legislature of that State had for years been 
anxious to get rid, not of the slaves, but of the 
free negroes. On the 1st January, 1817, the Co- 
lonization Society, the result of Virginia policy, 



104 COLONIZATION AND 

was organized at Washington, and immediately 
presented a memorial to Congress praying for 
national countenance. The committee to whom 
this memorial was referred, reported (11th Feb.) 
two resolutions: — 1st, Calling on the President 
to enter into negotiations with foreign powers for 
the "entire and immediate abolition of the traffic 
in slaves ;" and 2nd, asking him to obtain the con- 
sent of Great Britain to our colonizing free people 
of colour at Sierra Leone. Thus early was the 
cause of Colonization connected with the agitation 
in Congress about the slave trade ; a connexion 
from which, as we shall presently see, the Society 
reaped a very large pecuniary advantage. The 
resolutions were not acted on, and the next ses- 
sion, Mr. Mercer, regarded in Virginia as the 
father of the Society, succeeded in getting a vote 
of the House (Dec. 30th, 1817,) instructing the 
committee on the memorial from the Society, to 
report on the expediency of rendering the laws 
against the slave trade more effectual. Of this com- 
mittee Mr. Mercer was himself the chairman ; and 
he recommended in his report, that the President 
should take measures for procuring suitable terri- 
tory in Africa for colonizing free people of colour 
with their own consent ; and that armed vessels 
should occasionally be sent to Africa for the pur- 



THE SLAVE TRADE. 105 

pose of interrupting the trade. The suggestions 
of the committee were not adopted, but the ensu- 
ing session, (3d March, 1819,) a new act against 
the slave trade was passed, which gave " a local 
habitation" to the present colony of Monrovia; 
and was equivalent to a liberal and national grant 
to the Society. By this act, the President was 
authorized to restore to their country, such Afri- 
cans as might be captured on board of slavers, or 
illegally introduced into the United States; and 
he was to appoint agents on the coast to receive 
them. Mr. Monroe, then President of the United 
States, was a zealous colonizationist, and was af- 
terwards placed at the head of the Society. Let 
us see what use he made of the powers entrusted 
to him by the act of 1819. Many years after, an 
inquiry was instituted in Congress as to the ex- 
penditures under this law, and the Secretary of 
the Navy (1830,) reported that "252 persons* of 

* We have not been able to ascertain from what sources these 
Africans were obtained, but that they were not all of them trophies 
of the zeal of our cruisers in the cause of humanity, appears from 
the following extracts from official documents. " There are now 
in the charge of the Marshal of Georgia, 243 Africans taken out of 
a South American privateer, the " General Ramirez," ivhose crew 
mutinied, and brought the vessel into St. Mai^s, Georgia.— Letter 
of Sec'y of Navy, 7th Feb'y, 1821 . " A decision of the Supreme 
Court in the case of the ' General Ramirez,' placed under the con- 



106 COLONIZATION AND 

this description (recaptured Africans,) have been 
removed to the settlement provided by the Col- 
onization Society on the coast of Africa ; and 
that there had been expended therefor, the sum 
of two hundred and sixty-four thousand seven 
hundred and ten dollars. * * * The practice 
has been to furnish these persons with provisions 
for a period of time after being landed in Africa, 
varying from six months to one year ; to provide 
them with houses, arms, and ammunition ; to pay 
for the erection of fortifications, for the building 
of vessels for their use, and in short to render all 
the aid required for the founding and support of a 
colonial establishment" 

A report from Amos Kendall, Fourth Auditor 
of the Treasury, discloses more particularly the 
manner in which the " Act in addition to the Acts 
prohibiting the slave trade," was made subservient 
to the purposes of the Colonization Society. 

" In May, 1822, the Secretary of the Navy di- 
rected that ten liberated Africans should be de- 
livered to Mr. J. Ashmun for transportation to 
Africa. The Secretary authorized' him to take 
out at the expense of the Government, 1 5,000 hard 

trol of the Government from 125 to 130 Africans, who were brought 
into Georgia, and arrangements arc making to send them to the 
Agency." — (Liberia.) — Report of Sec'y of Navy, Dec. 2d 1823. 



THE SLAVE TRADE. 107 

brick, 5,000 feet of assorted timber, 30 barrels of 
ship bread, eight of tar, four of pitch, four of 
rosin, and two of turpentine. #•#*#• 

In the simple grant of power to an agent to re- 
ceive recaptured negroes, it requires broad con- 
struction to find a grant of authority to colonize 
them, to build houses for them, to furnish them 
with farming utensils, to pay instructers to teach 
them, to purchase ships for their commerce, to 
build forts for their protection, to supply them 
with arms and munitions, and to employ the army 
and navy in their defence.*" 

It cannot be denied that the friends of Coloni- 
zation had great encouragement to proceed in 
their warfare against the slave trade. According- 
ly Mr. Mercer, as the chairman of the committee 
to whom a memorial from the Society had been 
referred, reported (May 9th, 1820,) a Bill incor- 
porating the Society, and another mailing the slave 
trade, piracy ; and likewise two resolutions, — the 
first requesting the President to negotiate with fo- 
reign powers, "on the means of effecting an en- 
tire and immediate abolition of the slave trade;" 
and another requesting him to make such use of 
the public armed vessels as may aid the efforts of 

* Senate Documents. 2 Sess. 2 Cong. 



108 FOREIGN NEGOTIATIONS. 

the Colonization Society. The first resolution was 
adopted, and the consideration of the other post- 
poned. A few days after, (May 15th.) the Act 
making the African slave trade piratical, was 
passed. But laws do not execute themselves : 
and if any slave trader has suffered death in the 
United States as a pirate, we confess our igno- 
rance of the fact.* 

It certainly required some little assurance in the 
House of Representatives, thus to order a negoti- 
ation with foreign powers, for the suppression of 
the trade, when the Federal Government had it- 
self been so remiss in its efforts, that both Houses 
of the British Parliament had, the year before, 

♦In 1S20, a slave vessel, the Science, fitted out at New- York, and 
commanded by Adolphe Lacoste of Charleston, South Carolina, 
was captured on the coast of Africa, by the United States Ship, 
Cyane, and Lacoste sent home for trial. The trial took place 
in the Circuit Court of the United States, before Judge Storey. 
The evidence was full and unequivocal ; Lacoste was convicted, 
and sentenced to five years' imprisonment, and to the payment of 
a fine of $3,000. Had the crime been committed a few months 
later, the penalty would have been death, under the new law, de- 
claring the trade piracy. Lacoste received -a full pardon from the 
President, and the reader may thence judge, whether had he 
been convicted as a pirate, his life would have been much in dan- 
ger. The reasons assigned for the pardon, were youth, previous 
good character, and an aged mother. — Niles's Register, Jtpril -20, 
1822. 



ABOUT SLAVE TRADE. 109 

(July, 1819,) addressed the Prince Regent, praying 
him to renew " his beneficent endeavours, more 
especially with the Governments of France and 
the United States of America, for the effectual 
attainment of an object we all profess to have in 
view :" and a negotiation had already been actu- 
ally commenced with our Government, proposing 
to concede " to each other's ships of war, a quali- 
fied right of search, with a power of detaining the 
vessels of either State, with slaves actually on 
board ; # and a positive refusal to this proposal 
had already been returned. There is no evidence 
that our Government ever took a single measure 
in consequence of this resolution ; and under all 
the circumstances of the case, it is not uncharita- 
ble to believe, that it was intended to save appear- 
ances. 

We must now beg the reader's attention to a 
new act, in this farce of suppressing the slave 
trade. 

In 1814, our government concluded a war with 
Great Britain, and in the treaty of peace, gave its 
assent to the following article. " Whereas the 
traffic in slaves is irreconcilable with the princi- 
ples of humanity and justice : and whereas His 

* Letter from Lord Castlereagh to Mr. Rush, June 20, 1818. 
10 



110 FOREIGN NEGOTIATIONS 

Majesty and the United States are desirous of 
continuing their efforts to promote its entire abo- 
lition, it is hereby agreed, that both the contract- 
ing parties shall use their best endeavours to ac- 
complish so desirable an object." 

On the 29th January, 1823, Mr. Stratford Can- 
ning, the British Minister at Washington, addres- 
sed a letter to Secretary of State, reminding him 
of this pledge, and calling on the American Gov- 
ernment either to assent to the plan proposed by 
Great Britain, or to suggest some other efficient 
one in its place. After the reception of tliis let- 
ter, and before the return of an answer, the fol- 
lowing resolution was passed (28th Feb.) by the 
House of Representatives, viz. 

" Resolved, that the President of the United 
States be requested to enter upon and prosecute 
from time to time, such negotiations with the sev- 
eral maritime powers of Europe and America, as 
he may deem expedient, for the effectual abolition 
of the African slave trade, and its ultimate denun- 
ciation as piracy, under the laws of nations, by the 
consent of the civilized world." 

The British Minister was then informed, in an- 
swer to his letter, that the plan proposed by the 
United States was a mutual stipulation to annex 
the penalty of piracy to the offence of participat- 



ABOUT SLAVE TRADE. Ill 

ing in the trade, by the citizens and subjects of 
the two parties. Mr. Canning replied, that" Great 
Britain desires no other, than that any of her sub- 
jects who so far defy the laws, and dishonour the 
character of their country as to engage in a trade 
of blood, proscribed not more by the act of the 
legislature, than by the national feeling, should 
be detected and brought to justice even by for- 
eign hands, and from under the protection of her 
flag." He nevertheless urged a limited conces- 
sion of the right of search, as the only practical 
cure of the evil ; and he communicated the fact, 
that so late as January, 1822, it was stated offi- 
cially by the Governor of Sierra Leone, "that 
the fine rivers of Nunez and Pongas were entirely 
under the control of renegade European, and 
American slave traders." He then proposed that a 
mutual right of search should be conceded, to be 
confined to a fixed number of cruisers on each side ; 
to be restricted to certain parts of the ocean ; 
and that to prevent abuses, these cruisers should 
act under regulations prepared by mutual con- 
sent ; and moreover, that this concession should 
be made only for a short time, that if found in- 
convenient in practice, it might be discontinued. * 

♦Letter from Mr. Statford Canning to the Secretary of State, 
18th April, 1823. 



112 FOREIGN NEGOTIATIONS 

But the Republic stood on its dignity, and would 
not condescend to yield a concession which Great 
Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, 
Denmark, Sweden, and Sardinia, have thought 
it no degradation to make in the cause of hu- 
manity. 

But still the American Government was very 
anxious that every man of every nation, who en- 
gaged in the traffic of slaves on the coast of Afri- 
ca, (not in the District of Columbia,) should be 
hung by the neck till he was dead ; and forth- 
with, in obedience to the resolution of 28th Feb- 
ruary, despatches were forwarded to the Cabi- 
nets of France, Spain, Portugal, Russia, the Neth- 
erlands, Buennos Ayres, and Columbia, announc- 
ing the desire of the United States to declare the 
trade piracy, by the common consent of nations # 

It is generally understood, that a pirate is an 
enemy to the human race, and may be put to 
death by any government in whose hands he may 
chance to fall. If this was not the purport of the 
proposition of the House of Representatives, that 
the trade should be denounced " as piracy under 
the laws of nations, by the consent of the civilized 
world? we may well ask, what did it mean ? 

On the 24th June, 1823, instructions were for- 
warded to our Minister in England, authorizing 



ABOUT SLAVE TRADE. 113 

him to conclude a treaty with Great Britain on 
the subject of the slave trade, on certain condi- 
tions. " The draft of a convention," says the 
Secretary of State, " is herewith enclosed, which, 
IF the British Government should agree to treat 
upon this subject, on the basis of a legislative 
prohibition of the slave trade by both parties un- 
der the penalties of piracy, you are authorised 
to propose and conclude." 

Now it should be remembered, that at this time 
the trade was not piratical by the British laws, and 
the English Ministry could not make it so by treaty. 
We therefore proposed a condition with which pos- 
sibly, they might not have it in their power to 
comply. The ministry, however, when made ac- 
quainted with the condition, felt confident of the 
acquiescence of Parliament. " The British Pleni- 
potentiaries, says Mr. Rush, in his letter to the 
Secretary of State, " gave their unhesitating con- 
sent to the principle of denouncing the traffic as 
piracy, provided we could arrive at a common 
mind on all the other parts of the plan proposed." 

The treaty, nearly verbatim, with the draft sent 
from Washington, was signed at London on the 
13th March, 1824 ; and a few days afterwards, 
according to a previous understanding, and in ful- 
filment of the condition exacted by us, Parliament 
10* 



114 TREATY FOF SUPPRESSION 

passed an Act, declaring that all British subjects 
found guilty of slave trading, "shall suffer death 
without benefit of clergy, and loss of lands, goods 
and chattels, as pirates, felons and robbers upon 
the seas, ought to suffer." 

This treaty provided in substance, that the 
cruisers of either party on the coast of Africa, 
America, and the West Indies, might seize slaves 
under the flag of the other, and send them home 
to the country to which they belonged, where 
they should be proceeded against as pirates. So 
that in fact, the whole concession made by us 
to Great Britain, amounted to no more than per- 
mitting her to arrest our pirates, and to deliver 
them to our courts for trial ; and in return, she 
granted us precisely the same right with respect 
to her pirates. 

The treaty was submitted of course to the Sen- 
ate for ratification, which, under the circumstan- 
ces of the case, one would think, must have fol- 
lowed as a matter of course. The Senate, how- 
ever, thought otherwise. The treaty was laid 
before them on the 30th of April ; but as they de- 
layed to act upon it, the British Minister at Wash- 
ington became uneasy, and on the 10th of May, 
addressed a letter to the Secretary of State, 
complaining of the postponement of the ratifica- 



OP AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 115 

tion, especially as the project of the convention 
had originated with the United States ; and as 
Great Britain " had not hesitated an instant to 
comply with the preliminary act desired by the 
President," the legislative prohibition of the slave 
trade under the penalties of piracy." 

The President naturally feeling his own good 
faith compromitted by the hesitation of the Sen- 
ate, now sent them a confidential message, urging 
the ratification of the treaty. He remarked that 
the rejection of the treaty would subject the Ex- 
ecutive, Congress, and the Nation, " to the charge 
of insincerity respecting the great result of the 
final suppression of the slave trade. To invite all 
nations with the statute of piracy in our hands, to 
adopt its principles as the law of nations, and yet 
to deny to all the common rights of search for the 
pirate, whom it would be impossible to detect 
without entering and searching the vessel, would 
expose us not simply to the charge of inconsist- 
ency." 

The Senate after long debates, finally ratified 
the treaty, in a mutilated form. They struck out 
the word, "America," in the clause authorizing the 
seizure of slavers on " the coasts of Africa, Ame- 
rica, and the West Indies." They also expunged 
the articles applying the provisions of the treaty, 



116 TREATY FOR SUPPRESSION 

to vessels chartered, as well as owned by the citi- 
zens or subjects of either party ; and to the citi- 
zens or subjects of either party carrying on the 
trade under foreign flags ; and they added an ar- 
ticle authorizing either party to terminate the 
treaty at any time, on giving six months notice. 

It will have been observed from the documents 
we have quoted, that the slaves imported into 
the United States, have been chiefly introduced 
through the Spanish possessions on our southern 
frontiers ; slavers direct from Africa, rarely hav- 
ing the hardihood to enter our ports, and discharge 
their cargoes ; while small vessels from the West 
Indies, have occasionally found their way into the 
southern waters. Of course the treaty as altered 
by the Senate, would afford but little interruption 
to this mode of stocking the plantations of Louisi- 
ana and the neighbouring States. 

As chartered vessels were excepted, our traders 
would only have to hire slavers instead of owning 
them, to be exempted from the hazard of being 
arrested and sent home for trial, by British offi- 
cers ; or even if on board their own vessels, by 
running up a. foreign flag, they would escape the 
penalties of piracy. 

The British Cabinet refused to agree to the 
treaty thus despoiled of all its efficiency; but with 



OF AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 117 

wonderful simplicity, they proposed to restrict the 
right of searcli on the coast of America, to the 
coast of the southern States. This proposition 
was of course, promptly rejected by our Minister 
in England. 

The British Government vainly cherishing the 
hope, that the United States might still consent to 
some combined effort to destroy a trade they pro- 
fessed to abhor, offered through their Minister at 
Washington, to consent to a treaty, word for word 
the same as the one the Senate had ratified, with 
the single exception of restoring the word, "Ame- 
rica." To this, Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State, 
replied, that " from the views entertained by the 
Senate, it would seem unnecessary and inexpedi- 
ent any longer to continue the negotiation respect- 
ing the slave convention, with any hope that it 
can assume a form satisfactory to both parties. 
That a similar convention had been formed with 
Columbia, on the 10th December, 1824, excepting 
that the coast of America was excepted from its 
operation; and yet, notwithstanding this concilia- 
tory feature, the Senate had by a large majority 
refused to ratify it"* 

* The documents quoted on this subject, may be found in State 
Papers, 1st Scss. 19 Cong. vol. 1. And in Reports of Commit- 
tees, 1st Scss. 21 Cong. vol. 3. No. 348, 



118 FINAL DECISION. 

Negotiations have since been renewed on this 
subject; and France has united with Great Brit- 
ain, in urging the Cabinet at Washington to co- 
operate with them in putting an end to the Afri- 
can slave trade. The correspondence has not 
been made public, but we learn from the Edin- 
burgh Review, for July, 1836, that the final answer 
of the American Government is, that "under no con- 
dition, in no form, and with no restriction, will 
the United States enter into any convention, or 
treaty, or combined efforts of any sort or kind 
with other nations, for the suppression of this 
trade: 1 

To our readers we leave the task of making 
their own comments on this history of duplicity 
and hypocrisy ; and proceed to other details. 

On the 2nd November, 1825, the Columbian 
Minister at Washington, in the name of his Gov- 
ernment, invited the United States to send dele- 
gates to a Congress of the South American Re- 
publics, to be held at Panama. In enumerating 
the topics to be discussed in the proposed Con- 
gress, he remarked : " The consideration of means 
to be adopted for the entire abolition of the Afri- 
can slave trade, is a subject sacred to humanity, 
and interesting to the policy of the American 
States. To effect it, their energetic, general, and 



OP THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 119 

uniform cooperation, is desirable. At the proposi- 
tion of the United States, Columbia made a con- 
vention with them on this subject, which has not 
been ratified by the Government of the United 
States. Would that America which does not think 
politic what is unjust, contribute in union, and 
with common consent, to the good of Africa ! " 

This document was submitted to the Senate, 
and on the 16th January, 1826, a committee of 
the Senate made a report in relation to it, in 
which they observe; "The United States have 
not certainly the right, and ought never to feel the 
inclination to dictate to others who may differ 
with them on this subject," (the slave trade,) " nor 
do the committee see the expediency of insulting 
other States by ascending the moral chair, and pro- 
claiming from thence mere abstract principles, of 
the rectitude of which each nation enjoys the per- 
fect right of deciding for itself." 

The remarks made on this occasion by Mr. 
White, a' Senator from Tennessee, are worthy of 
observation. "In these new States (the S. Ame- 
rican Republics,) some of them have put it down 
in their fundamental law, 'that whoever owns a 
slave shall cease to be a citizen.' Is it then fit 
that the United States should disturb the quiet of 
the southern and western States upon any subject 



120 INTERFERENCE FOR CUBA. 

connected with slavery ? I tfiink not. Can it be 
the desire of any prominent politician in the Uni- 
ted States, to divide us into parties upon the sub- 
ject of slavery ? I hope not. Let us then cease 
to talk about slavery in this House ; let us cease to 
negotiate upon any subject connected with it." 

We have seen most abundantly, that slavehold- 
ers have no objection to talk about slavery in 
Congress, or to negotiate about it with foreign na- 
tions, when the object is to guard their beloved 
institution from danger. It is only on the abomi- 
nations of the system, and the means of removing 
it, that every tongue must be mute, and the Fed- 
eral Government passive. Turning from the con- 
sideration of our professions, as contrasted with 
our conduct in regard to the suppression of the 
African slave trade, let us next take a view of 

The efforts of the Federal Government to 
prevent the abolition of slavery in the 
Island of Cuba. 

At the time of the Congress of Panama, Spain 
was still at war with her late colonies, and of 
course they were authorized by every principle 
of national law, as well as of self-defence, to car- 
ry their arms into the dominions of their enemy. 



INTERFERENCE FOR CUBA. 121 

Cuba was at a short distance, devoted to the roy- 
al cause, and affording a depot for a naval force 
ever ready to prey upon the commerce of the re- 
publics. Under these circumstances, Mexico and 
Columbia meditated the invasion and conquest of 
that island. But these republics, on achieving 
their own freedom, had given freedom to their 
slaves ; and it was probable that they would 
manifest equal regard for human rights, were 
they to become masters of Cuba. These remarks 
will explain the following extract from the in- 
structions given to the ministers appointed to re- 
present the United States at the Congress of 
Panama. 

" It is required by the frank and friendly rela- 
tions which we most anxiously desire ever to 
cherish with the new republics, that you should, 
without reserve, explicitly state that the United 
States have too much at stake, in the fortunes of 
Cuba, to allow them to see with indifference a 
war of invasion prosecuted in a desolating man- 
ner, or to see employed, in the purposes of such a 
w T ar, one race of the inhabitants combatting 
against another, upon principles and with motives 
that must inevitably lead, if not to the extermina- 
tion of one party or the other, to the most shock- 
ing excesses. The humanity of the United States 
11 



122 INTERFERENCE FOR CUBA, 

in respect to the weaker, and which in such a 
terrible struggle would probably be the suffering 
portion, and the duty to defend themselves against 
the contagion of such near and dangerous exam- 
ples, would constrain them, even at the hazard of 
losing the friendship of Mexico and Columbia, to 
employ all the means necessary to their secu- 
rity."* 

The obvious meaning of all this, in plain En- 
glish, divested of its diplomatic circumlocution, is 
eimply that the Federal Government, in order to 
protect the slavery of the South from the shock it 
might receive from emancipation in Cuba, would, 
if necessary, go to war with our sister republics 
to prevent the invasion of that island. 

But so long as Spain refused to acknowledge 
the independence of her revolted colonies, the 
war would be continued, Cuba would be exposed 
to invasion, and the slave States to the " conta- 
gion" of emancipation. Hence the cabinet at 
Washington became exceedingly anxious to act 
the part of peace-makers. Our Minister at St. 
Petersburgh was instructed " to endeavour to en- 
gage the Russian Government to contribute its 

+ Letter of Instructions from Mr. Clay, Secretary of State, to 
Messrs. Anderson and Sargeant, 8th May, 1826. 



INTERFERENCE FOR CUBA. 123 

best exertions towards terminating the existing 
contest between Spain and her colonies. From 
the vicinity of Cuba to the United States, its val- 
uable commerce and the nature of its population, 
their government cannot be indifferent to any po- 
litical change to which that island may be des- 
tined."* 

Spain also was implored, through the American 
Minister at Madrid, to be reconciled to her un- 
dutiful children. " It is not for the new republics? 
said Mr. Clay, in his letter (27th April, 1825,) to 
Mr. Everett, "that the President wishes you to 
urge upon Spain the expediency of concluding 
the war. If the war should continue between 
Spain and the new republics, and those islands 
(Cuba and Porto Rico) should become the object 
and theatre of it, their fortunes have such a con- 
nexion with the people of the United States, that 
they could not be indifferent spectators ; and the 
possible contingencies of a protracted war might 
bring upon the Government of the United States 
duties and obligations, the performance of which, 
however painful it slwuld be, they might not be at 
liberty to decline ."f 



* Letter from Mr. Clay to Mr. Middlcton, 10th May, 1825, 
Bate Documents, 1st Sess. 19 Cong, vol.3. 



124 INTERFERENCE FOR CUBA. 

• 

The proposed invasion was abandoned ; but 
the fears of our Government were not allayed. 
The war continued, and some contingency arising 
from it, might give liberty to the tens of thou- 
sands in Cuba pining in bonds. A new attempt 
was made to induce Spain to remove the danger 
by concluding the war. On the 22d October, 
1829, Mr. Van Buren, then Secretary of State, 
instructed Mr. Van Ness, our Minister in Spain, 
to press upon that court a reconciliation with the 
South American republics. " Considerations," he 
remarked, "connected with a certain class of our 
population, make it the interest of the southern sec- 
tion of the Union, that no attempt should be made 
in that island to throw off the yoke of Span- 
ish dependence ; the first effect of which would 
be the sudden emancipation of a numerous slave 
population, whose result could not but be very sen- 
sibhj felt upon the adjacent shores of the United 
States:' 

Fortunate is it for the cause of humanity, that 
the greatest republic upon earth had not the pow- 
er to prevent " the sudden emancipation of a nu- 
merous slave population" in the British West In- 
dies, on the 1st August, 1838; "whose result," 
blessed be God, is and will be " very sensibly felt 
on the adjacent shores of the United States." 



AVOWALS IN CONGRESS. 125 

The subject of the Panama mission was de- 
bated at great length in both Houses of Congress, 
and frequent allusions were made by the speak- 
ers to Cuba. Let us hearken to the sentiments 
expressed by some of our republican legislators. 

Mr. Randolph of Virginia: "Cuba possesses 
an immense negro population. In case those 
States (Mexico and Columbia) should invade Cuba 
at all, it is unquestionable that this invasion will 
be made with this principle, — this genius of uni- 
versal emancipation, — this sweeping anathema 
against the white population in front, — and then, 
sir, what is the situation of the southern States V 9 

Mr. Johnson of Louisiana : " We know that 
Columbia and Mexico have long contemplated the 
independence of that island (Cuba.) The final 
decision is now to be made, and the combination 
of forces and plan of attack to be formed. What, 
then, at such a crisis, becomes the duty of the 
Government ? Send your Ministers instantly to 
this diplomatic assembly, where the measure is 
maturing. Advise with them — remonstrate — 
menace, if necessary, against a step so dangerous 
to us, and perhaps fatal to them." 

Mr. Berrien of Georgia : " The question to 
be determined is this : With a due regard to the 
safety of the southern States, can you suffer these 
11* 



126 AVOWALS IN CONGRESS. 

islands (Cuba and Porto Rico) to pass into the 
hands of BUCANIERS, drunk with their new- 
born liberty ? If our interests and our safety shall 
require us to say to these new republics, Cuba 
and Porto Rico must remain as they are, we are 
free to say it, and by the blessing of God and the 
strength of our arms, to enforce the declaration ; 
and let me say to gentlemen, these high consid- 
erations do require it. The vital interests of the 
South demand it." 

These new republics were stigmatized by this 
honourable gentleman as bucaniers ; not that they 
were robbers, but because they had ceased to rob 
the poor and helpless ; and the evidence of their 
being drunk with liberty, was their practical ac- 
knowledgement of the principles of human rights, 
professed in our declaration of independence. 

Mr. Floyd of Virginia : " So far as I can see, 
in all its bearings, it (the Panama Congress) looks 
to the conquest of Cuba and Porto Rico ; or, at 
all events, of tearing them from the Crown of 
Spain. The interests, if not safety of our own 
country, would rather require us to interpose to 
prevent such an event, and I would rather take 
up arms to prevent than to accelerate such an 
occurrence." — Congressional Debates, 2d vol. 
The facts and sentiments we have now cxhib- 



IIISTORY OF HAYTI. 127 

ited, prove beyond cavil, that, this mighty repub- 
lic volunteered to solicit the aid of foreign mon- 
archs to perpetuate slavery in Cuba, and was 
strongly disposed to incur the hazard and calami- 
ties of war in the cause, — not of liberty, but of 
bondage. 

Having noticed our watchful guardianship over 
Cuba, we will next advert to 

The hostility of the Federal Government 
to Hayti. 

To do justice to this part of our subject, we 
must beg the patience of the reader while we 
briefly lay before him a few historical facts. 

The Island of St. Domingo was one of the most 
valuable colonies belonging to the crown of France. 
It is about 450 miles long, and 150 wide. Its 
population in 1790, was estimated as follows: 
White inhabitants, 42,000 

Free coloured inhabitants, 44,000 

Slaves, 600,000 



Total, 086,000 

Of the free coloured inhabitants, numerically 
equal with the whites, many were men of edu- 
cation and property, landed proprietors, and the 



128 HISTORY OF UAYTI. 

holders of slaves. Still they were debarred from 
all political privileges on account of their com- 
plexion. At the commencement of the French 
Revolution, the National Assembly abolished this 
discrimination on account of colour, and gave the 
free blacks in the colonies, the same civil rights 
that were possessed by their white brethren. The 
pride of the latter led them to refuse submission to 
this humiliating decree of the mother country, and 
a civil war between the whites and the free 
blacks, ensued. No interference whatever with 
the rights of slaveholders as such, had at this time 
been attempted, either in France or the colony ; 
and the dissensions which convulsed the Island, 
for a long time related exclusively to the political 
condition of the free coloured population. In Au- 
gust, 1791, a partial insurrection of the slaves oc- 
curred, favoured by the quarrels of their masters. 
In some instances the free blacks united with the 
whites, in their efforts to suppress the insurrec- 
tion, and in others, they availed themselves of the 
aid of the revolted slaves, against the planters. 

In ]792, the French Government sent over three 
commissioners with 6000 troops, to enforce their 
decree respecting the free blacks, and to restore 
order. Many of the planters, however, still re- 
sisted ; while others took sides with the Govern- 



HISTORY OF IIAYTI. 129 

ment, and the distractions of trre Island were now 
aggravated by a civil war between the ichites 
themselves. 

A portion of the planters, abhorring the attempt 
of the Government to elevate the free blacks to 
apolitical equality with themselves, now intrigued 
with Great Britain to seize upon the Island, and 
thus to save them from the degrading consequen- 
ces of republican principles. In compliance with 
their invitation, conveyed through their agent, 
M. Charmilly, an expedition was fitted out at Ja- 
maica, for the capture of St. Domingo ; and on 
the 19th Sept. 1793, arrived at Jeremie. Only a 
few days before the appearance of the British 
fleet on the coast, one of the French commission- 
ers, who happened at the moment to be acting 
alone, in the absence of his colleagues, having re- 
ceived intelligence of the intended invasion, and 
knowing the disaffection of the planters, issued a 
hasty proclamation, giving freedom to all the 
slaves, as the only means of preserving the col- 
ony from conquest.* 

The free negroes and the manumitte^klaves 
united in defending the Island against the invaders, 

* The ensuing } r car, 1794, by a decree of the National Assem- 
bly, slavery was formally abolished throughout all the French 
colonies. 



130 HISTORY OF HAYTI. 

while an army of* 2000 of the white inhabitants, 
ranged themselves under the British standard. 
The French commissioners soon after returned to 
France; great numbers of the planters emigrated ; 
and the Island was virtually abandoned to the 
blacks, except so much of it as was occupied 
by the British troops. These troops were from 
time to time reinforced by detachments from 
Europe and the West Indies — but in vain. The 
blacks under Toussaint, who was appointed by 
the government at home, " Governor General of 
the armies of St. Domingo," continued the con- 
test for about five years, and finally succeeded in 
driving the English from the Island. Britain be- 
ing in the meantime at war with France, her na- 
val forces prevented all intercourse between the 
colony and the mother country : and the blacks 
thus left to themselves, declared themselves inde- 
pendent on the 1st July, 1798, and organized the 
Government of Hayti. 

The peace of Amiens afforded Bonaparte an 
opportunity to attempt the subjugation of the Isl- 
and, and the reduction of its inhabitants to slavery. 

Early in Jan. 1802, a French army of 20,000 
men were landed in St. Domingo, and various re- 
inforcements afterwards followed. 

The war was waged with atrocious cruelty on 



HOSTILITY TO HAYTI. 131 

the part of the French, and the blacks, aided by 
the climate, succeeded in destroying about 40,000 
of their enemies in eleven months ; and on the 
19th of November, 1802, the wrecks of the in- 
vading army surrendered to Dessalines, the black 
chief. Since this time, Ilayti has continued an 
independent nation, perfectly inoffensive in all its 
foreign relations ; and its entire sovereignty is at 
present fully acknowledged by both France and 
England, and undisputed by any power on earth. 

It is now important to inquire, what has been 
the conduct of the United States towards this 
heroic republic ? 

Twelve years after slavery had been abolished 
by a decree of the French Government ; after 
the expulsion of the armies of England and France ; 
when for three years not a hostile foot had press- 
ed the soil of Hayti ; when a regularly organized 
government was in full operation ; and without 
one solitary cause of complaint against the new 
State, the American Congress passed an act, 
(28th Feb. 1806,) " to suspend the commercial in- 
tercourse between the United States and certain 
parts of the Island of St. Domingo." These cer- 
tain parts were defined in the act, to be such 
parts as were not " in the possession and under 
the acknowledgement of France ;" and of course 



132 HOSTILITY TO IIAYTI. 

included the whole Island. As there was at this 
time no war in fact, between Hayti and France, 
and the latter was prevented by the naval superi- 
ority of England, and her own continental wars, 
from sending a single soldier to Hayti ; the sole 
object of this act, was to distress and harass the 
Haytians by depriving them of the bread-stuffs 
and other necessaries they were accustomed to 
receive from this country. It was a piece of 
wanton cruelty, unrequired by the obligations of 
neutrality ; and demanded by France in a tone of 
arrogance, which would have secured its rejection, 
had not the intended victims been black. Bona- 
parte, irritated by the loss of his army, and the 
defeat of his designs upon Hayti, resolved to 
starve, if possible, a people whom he could not 
conquer ; and he found in the Federal Govern- 
ment, a willing instrument of his vengeance. His 
Minister at Washington, in a letter to the Secre- 
tary of State, demanded an immediate cessation 
of the commerce between the citizens of the Uni- 
ted States and "the rebels of St. Domingo — 
that race of African slaves, the reproach and the 
refuse of nature ;" and he enforced his demand 
with the information ; — "The Emperor and King, 
my master, expects from the dignity and candour 
of the Government of the Union, that an end be 



CONGRESS OF PANAMA. 133 

put to it promptly."* The letter was written in 
January ; and in February the act required was 
passed, and continued in force for two years. 

The invitation to the United States to send 
ministers to the Congress of Panama, has been 
already mentioned. In the document conveying 
the invitation, it was remarked : " On what ba- 
sis the relations of Hayti, and other parts of our 
hemisphere that shall hereafter be in like circum- 
stances, are to be placed, is a question simple at 
first view, but attended with serious difficulties 
when closely examined. These arise from the 
different manner of regarding Africans, and from 
their different rights in Hayti, the United States, 
and in the American States. This question will 
be determined at the Isthmus."f 

The invitation was accepted, and the instruc- 
tions of our ministers contained the following : — 
"Under the actual circumstances of Hayti, the 
President does not think that it would be proper 
at this time to recognise it as a new State. "J This, 
be it remembered, was just a quarter of a century 
since the Haytiens had declared and maintained 
their independence, and at a moment when they 

* American State papers, 5th vol. p. 154. 
| Senate Documents, 1st Sess. 19 Cong. vol. III. 
I Letter of Mr. Clay, Secretary of State, 8 May, 1826. 
12 



134 OPINIONS IN CONGRESS 

were enjoying the blessings and exercising the 
prerogatives of an independent State, and at peace 
with all the world. And what motive prompted 
the United States thus to exert its influence to 
prevent the Congress of Panama from recognising 
Hayti " as anew State?" — none other than the 
apprehension that the admission of a palpable truth, 
the independence of a black Republic, would prove 
dangerous to the perpetuity of American slavery. 
Is this slander ? Let the members of Congress 
speak for themselves. The following sentiments 
were elicited in the debate on the Panama mission. 
Mr. Berrien of Georgia : — " Consistently with 
our own safety, can the people of the South permit 
the intercourse which would result from the estab- 
lishing relations of any sort with Hayti ? Is the 
emancipated slave, his hands yet reeking" (thirty- 
two years after slavery had been abolished by the 
French Government) " in the blood of his mur- 
dered master, to be admitted into their ports, to 
spread the doctrines of insurrection, and to strength- 
en and invigorate them, by exhibiting in his own 
person an example of successful revolt ? Gentle- 
men must be sensible — this cannot be. The 
great principle of self-preservation will be arrayed 
against it. I have been educated in sentiments 
of habitual reverence for the Constitution of the 



RESPECTING IIAYTl. 135 

United States: I have been taught to consider 
the union of these States as essential to their safety. 
The feeling is nowhere more universal or more 
strong than among the people of the South. But 
they have a stronger feeling — need I name it ? 
Is there any one who hears and does not under- 
stand me ? Let me implore gentlemen not to call 
that feeling into action by this disastrous policy." 
In plain English, the slaveholders love slavery 
more than they do the Union ; and would sacrifice 
the last, rather than acknowledge as free, a people 
who had once been slaves. 

Mr. Benton of Missouri : — "The peace of eleven 
States in this Union will not permit the fruits of 
a successful negro insurrection to be exhibited 
among them ; — it will not permit the fact to be 
seen and told, that for the murder of their masters 
and mistresses they are to find friends among the 
white people of the United States." 

Mr. Hamilton of South Carolina : — " It is pro- 
per that on this occasion I should speak with 
candour and without reserve : that I should avow 
what I believe to be the sentiments of the south- 
ern people on this question, and this is that Haxj- 
tien independence is not to be tolerated in any 
form. * * * * A people will not stop to discuss the 



136 OPINIONS IN CONGRESS 

nice metaphysics of a federative system, when 
havoc and destruction menace them in their doors." 
Mr. Hayne of South Carolina: — "With noth- 
ing connected with slavery can we consent to 
treat with other nations ; and least of all ought 
we to touch the question of the independence of 
Hayti in conjunction with the revolutionary gov- 
ernments whose own history affords an example 
scarcely less fatal to our repose. These govern- 
ments have proclaimed principles of liberty and 
equality, and have marched to victory under the 
banner of universal emancipation. You find men 
of colour at the head of their armies, in the Legis- 
lative halls, and in the Executive departments. 

# # # # Q ur p li C y with regard to Hayti is plain ; 
we never can acknowledge her independence. 

* * * * Let our Government direct all our Minis- 
ters in South America and Mexico, to protest 
against the independence of Hayti." 

Gentlemen when they talk in a passion, rarely 
talk wisely or consistently. Mr. Hayne insists 
that we cannot touch the question of the independ- 
ence of Hayti in conjunction with the American 
Revolutionary Governments ; and yet in the next 
breath, he is for opening negotiations with all these 
governments on this very subject. Almost every 



RESPECTING HAYTI. 137 

slaveholder assures us that the slaves, if emancipa- 
ted, could not take care of themselves ; and yet Mr. 
Hayne proclaims the important fact, that the ar- 
mies of these same governments have " marched 
to victory" with coloured men at their head ; and 
that coloured men are found in their Legislative 
halls, and Executive departments ! 

Mr. Johnson of Louisiana : — "It may be proper 
to express to the South American States the un- 
alterable opinion entertained here in regard to 
intercourse with them. The unadvised recogni- 
tion of that Island, (Hayti) and the public recep- 
tion of their Ministers, will nearly sever our diplo- 
matic intercourse, and bring about a separation 
and alienation injurious to both. I deem it of the 
highest concern to the political connexion of these 
countries, to remonstrate against a measure so 
justly offensive to us, and to make that remon- 
strance effectual." — Congressional Debates, 
vol. II. 

Thus the gentleman from Louisiana looked up- 
on the recognition of Hayti by other and inde- 
pendent States, as a measure so offensive to us, 
as to afford us ground for quarrelling with them. 

We will now advance twelve years in our his- 
tory, and see if the lapse of time has softened the 
hatred of our rulers to Hayti. On the 17th De- 
12* 



138 OPINIONS IN CONGRESS 

cember, 1838, a petition was presented to the 
House of Representatives, praying for the estab- 
lishment of the usual international relations with 
that republic. No sooner was the purport of the 
petition announced, than vehement objections 
were made to it, and no less than thirty-two 
members had the hardihood to vote against even 
its reception. They were, however, in the mi- 
nority ; and on a motion being made to refer it 
to the Committee on Foreign Relations, the 
Chairman of that committee, himself a slavehold- 
er, advocated the reference, as the best way of 
stifling the discussion, observing that " several 
similar memorials had been sent there the last 
session, which had never been reported on. This 
would take a similar course ; it would never be 
heard of again'' With this intimation, the peti- 
tion was referred. A motion was then made to 
instruct the committee to report on the petition ; 
but, to stop the discussion, the previous question 
was moved, and the motion denied by a great ma- 
jority. A few extracts from the speeches deliv- 
ered on this occasion may be useful, as showing 
the temper and logic displayed by the southern 
members. 

Mr. Legare of South Carolina : " It (the peti- 
tion) originates in a design to revolutionize the 



RESPECTING HAYTI. 139 

South and convulse the Union, and ought therefore 
to be rejected with reprobation. As sure as you 
live, sir, if this course is permitted to go on, the 
sun of this Union will go down — it will go down 
in BLOOD — and go down to rise no more. I 
will vote unhesitatingly against nefarious designs 
like these. They are treason, — yes sir, I pro- 
nounce the authors of such things traitors — trai- 
tors not to their country only, but to the whole 

HUMAN RACE." 

Mr. Wise of Virginia : " We are called to re- 
cognise the insurrectionists who rose on their 
French masters. A large portion of those now in 
power in this black republic, are slaves who cut 
their masters' throats. Christophe himself was 
an insurrectionist and a revolutionist. Their Gov- 
ernment lias the stamp of such an origin. And 
will any gentleman tell me now, that slaves, aided 
by an English army, (and it is consolatory to 
think, when we are threatened by abolitionists 
with having our throats cut at the South, that 
these slaves in St. Domingo, though ten to one in 
number, never could have succeeded in insurrec- 
tion but for the aid of the British army,) ought to 
be recognised by this Government, and that theii 
being such is no argument against it ? No, it is 
the abolition spirit alone which would have us 



140 BRITISH ARMY IN HAYTI. 

say to these men, whose hands are yet red with 
their masters' blood : ' You shall be recognised 
as freemen ; we wish to establish international 
relations with you.' Never will I — never will 
my constituents be forced into this. This is the 
only body of men who have emancipated them- 
selves by butchering their masters. They have 
long been free, I admit ; yet, if they had been 
free for centuries, — if Time himself should con- 
front me, and shake his hoary locks at my oppo- 
sition. — I should say to him, I owe more to my 
constituents — to the quiet of my people — than I 
owe or can owe to mouldy prescriptions, however 
ancient." 

The consolation enjoyed by this gentleman, 
from the conviction that the Haytiens are indebted 
to a British army for their liberty, is not a little 
ludicrous. There has never been but one British 
army in Hayti,and that was sent for the purpose, 
not of emancipation, but of conquest ; and instead 
of aiding the blacks, it was joined by two thou- 
sand of the planters, who looked to it as the 
means by which they were to recover their au- 
thority over their former slaves. Yet this army, 
thus aided, found itself vanquished by the despised 
blacks ; and in May, 1798, under Brigadier Gene- 
ral Maitland, capitulated to Toussaint, the black 



CONDITION OF HAYTI. 141 

General. The history of St. Domingo affords 
much and valuable instruction to slaveholders, but 
certainly very little consolation. 

It may not be uninteresting to state a few facts 
relative to the present condition of a republic 
which so powerfully excites the apprehensions of 
southern gentlemen, and to the magnitude of the 
commerce which our northern politicians are wil- 
ling to sacrifice for southern votes. 

The advocates of slavery are fond of represent- 
ing the Haytiens as a horde of barbarians. We 
therefore give the following evidence, published 
by the British Parliament, and taken before one 
of its committees. 

Evidence of Vice Admiral, the Hon. Charles 
Fleming, Member of Parliament : — " He could 
not speak positively of the increase of the Hay- 
tien population since 1804, but believed it had 
trebled since that time.* They now feed them- 
selves, and they export provisions which neither 
the French nor the Spaniards had ever done before. 
He saw a sugar estate near Cape Haytien, Gen- 
eral Boulon's, extremely well cultivated and in 
beautiful order. A new plantation was forming 



* By the census of 1824, the population was stated at 935,000. 
It is unquestionably upwards of a million at the present time. 



142 PRESENT CONDITION 

on the opposite side of the road. Their victuals 
were very superior to those in Jamaica, consist- 
ing chiefly of meat — cattle being very cheap. 
He saw no marks of destitution any where. The 
country seemed improving, and trade increasing. 
The estate he visited near the Cape was large ; 
it was calculated to make 300 hogsheads of su- 
gar. It was as beautifully laid out and as well 
managed as any estate he had seen in the West 
Indies. His official correspondence as Admiral, 
with the Haytien Government, made him attribute 
much efficiency to it, and it bore strong marks of 
civilization. There was a better police in Hayti 
than in the new South American States ; the 
communication was more rapid ; the roads much 
better. One had been cut from Port-au-Prince 
to Cape Haytien that would do honour to any 
country. A regular port was established. The 
government is one quite worthy of a civilized 
people." 

In 1831, the imports into France from Hayti 
exceeded in value the imports from Sweden, 
Denmark, the Hanseatic Towns, Holland, Aus- 
tria, Portugal, the French West Indies, or China. 
— McCullocNs Dictionary of Commerce, p. 637. 

In 1833, the imports from Hayti into the Uni- 
ted States exceeded in value our imports from 



OF HAYTI. 143 

Prussia, Sweden and Norway, Denmark and the 
Danish West Indies, Ireland and Scotland, Hol- 
land, Belgium, Dutch West Indies, British West 
Indies, Spain, Portugal, all. Italy, Turkey and the 
Levant, or any one of the South American re- 
publics. And what protection is afforded to this 
commerce by the Federal Government — a Gov- 
ernment willing to negotiate in every court of 
Europe for compensation for shipwrecked or fu- 
gitive negroes ? " Our trade with Hayti is embar- 
rassed ; it is subjected to severe discriminating 
duties. We are probably the least favoured of 
any people in the ports of the republic. Tonnage 
duties and vexatious port charges discourage and 
oppress our commerce there. I am assured that, 
but for these impediments, the trade from this 
country with that would be greatly extended. 
The acknowledged cause of all the embarrass- 
ments to that trade is found in the fact, that our 
Government refuses to recognise the Government 
of Hayti. We stand aloof, as if they were a law- 
less tribe of savages. While all other powers 
have long since acknowledged them as an inde- 
pendent Sovereignty, we refuse to recognise 
them. Others profit by their commerce at our 
expense. We have no representative at the isl- 
and of any grade, nor have they a public officer 



144 TEXAS. 

accredited here. No commercial relation, there- 
fore, exists between the two Governments." — 
Speech of Mr. Grennell in H. of i?«, 18th Decem- 
ber, 1838. 

If the treatment which Hayti has received from 
the United States, evinces the hatred of our re- 
public to emancipation, we have a proof no less 
strong of its attachment to slavery, in 

The conduct of the Federal Government 
towards Texas. 

In 1829, the Republic of Mexico having achieved 
her own independence, gave liberty to every slave 
within her limits. This State had a vast and 
fertile, but thinly peopled territory, adjacent to 
Louisiana. In this territory within a few years 
past, a large number of adventurers from the Uni- 
ted States, had taken up their residence with the 
consent, and under the jurisdiction of Mexico. 
These adventurers sighed for the sweets of sla- 
very, which they had enjoyed in their native land ; 
and as the soil was adapted to the cotton cultiva- 
tion, they became restless under the requirement 
of the Government, either to till it themselves, 
or honestly to pay those who tilled it for them. 
Hence, they conceived the idea of transferring 



TEXAS. 145 

their allegiance from Mexico, to another repub- 
lic less tenacious of human rights. • Nor was a 
large portion of that other republic less anxious 
to acquire a new market for slaves, and a new 
territory which would give to the slaveholding 
interest a preponderance in the national councils. 
Judge Upshur in 1829, remarked in the Virginia 
Convention : "If Texas should be obtained, which 
he strongly desired, it would raise the price of 
slaves, and be a great advantage to the slavehold- 
ers in that State;" and in 1832, Mr. Gholston 
declared in the Virginia Legislature, that "he be- 
lieved the acquisition of Texas would raise the 
price of slaves fifty per cent, at least." Virginia, 
it will be recollected, is a breeding State, and 
therefore interested in the opening of a new mar- 
ket. The planting States have no wish to raise 
the price of slaves, but are deeply concerned for 
the perpetuity of the system. One of their dis- 
tinguished politicians published a series of essays 
on the policy of annexing Texas to the United 
States ; a territory, which he contended, was 
large enough to be divided into nine slave States, 
which would counterbalance the increasing num- 
ber of free States at the North. 

The Federal Government ever ready to pro- 
mote the slaveholding interest, commenced a ne- 
13 



146 INVASION OF TEXAS 

gotiation for the purchase of Texas, and offered 
four millions of dollars for the territory.* The 
offer was promptly rejected, and other means 
were resorted to. 

Texan land companies were formed at the 
North, for the sale of extensive tracts of land, 
said to have been obtained by grants, from the 
Mexican Government. Capitalists, politicians, and 
demagogues participated in these splendid schemes 
of speculation, and became vociferous in the cause 
of Texan liberty. At the same time, crowds of 
emigrants repaired to the territory, many carrying 
their slaves with them. At last, these men feel- 
ing themselves strong enough, raised the standard 
of rebellion in September, 1835, and on the 2d of the 
succeeding March, issued their declaration of in- 
dependence. The Mexicans of course, endea- 
voured to quell the insurrection; but, although 
nominally fighting with their own subjects, they 
were in fact contending against an invasion from 
the United States. The truth of this assertion will 
scarcely be questioned : yet it may be well to sup- 
port it by a few facts. The following extracts 
from the journals of the day, will, it is presumed, 
be sufficient. 

* See instructions from Mr. Van Buren, Secretary of State, to 
Mr. Poinsett, Minister to Mexico, August 25, 1829. 



FROM THE UNITED STATES. 147 

" Who will go to Texas? — Major J. W. Har- 
vey of Lincolnton, has been authorized by me, 
with the consent of Major-General Hunt, an agent 
in the western counties of North Carolina, to re- 
ceive and enrol volunteer emigrants to Texas ; 
and will conduct such as may wish to emigrate to 
that Republic, about the 1st of October next, at 
the expense of the Republic of Texas. 

J. P. Henderson, 
Brig. Gen. of the Texan Army? 
North Carolina Paper. 

" Three hundred Men for Texas. — Gen. Dun- 
lap of Tennessee, is about to proceed to Texas, 
with the above number of men. The whole corps 
are now at Memphis. Every man is completely 
armed, the corps having been originally raised for 
the Florida war. This force we have no doubt, 
will be able to carry every thing before it." 
— Yicksburg (Miss.) Register. 

" Since early last winter, a series of transactions 
have passed before us in open day, the undisguised 
object of which has been to enlist troops, and 
procure arms to aid the Texans in their war with 
Mexico. Troops have been enlisted — arms have 
been obtained. Their military parades have been 
exhibited in our streets — they have embarked at 



148 INVASION OF TEXAS. 

our wharf — have proceeded to Texas — united 
themselves with her troops, and joined with them 
in war against Mexico. Is it not a fact that every 
stand of public arms deposited at this place by 
the State, have been sent to Texas, with the con- 
nivance of those who had charge of them ?" 
— Cincinnati Gazette. 

Meetings were held in various places, and 
speeches made, and resolutions passed in favour 
of the Texan patriots. 

At a meeting in Cincinnati, of the friends of 
Texas, it was resolved : " That no law either hu- 
man or divine, except such as are formed by ty- 
rants for their sole benefit, forbids our assisting 
the Texans ; and such law, if any exists, we do 
not as Americans choose to obey." 

The Federal Government far from taking any 
efficient measures to arrest this invasion of a 
friendly and neighbouring State, sent an imposing 
force under Gen. Gaines, info the Mexican territory, 
under the pretence of protecting the frontiers ! — 
With what result is shown by the following article. 

From the Pensacola Gazette. 
" About the middle of last month, Gen. Gaines 
sent an officer of the United States army into 
Texas, to reclaim some deserters. He found 



SLAVERY ESTABLISHED. 149 

them already enlisted in the Texan service to the 
number of two hundred. They still wore the uni- 
form of our army, but refused of course to return. 
The commander of the Texan army was applied 
to, to enforce their return, but his only reply was, 
that the soldiers might go, but that he had no au- 
thority to send them back. This is a new view 
of our Texan relations" 

The adventurers in Texas had no sooner set up 
themselves, than they adopted a constitution, in 
which they aimed, — first, to secure themselves 
and their children for ever, the blessings of sla- 
very ; and secondly, to acquire the aid and pro- 
tection of the United States. The first object 
was to be attained by a constitutional prohibition 
of both private and legislative emancipation ; and 
by making it a fundamental law of the Republic, 
that no free black or mulatto person should re- 
side within its boundaries ; and the second object, 
by giving to the United States in perpetuity, a 
monopoly of the slave market in Texas, — the im- 
portation of slaves from any other country, being 
absolutely prohibited, thus promising to realize the 
golden visions of the Virginia breeders. 

A feverish impatience now pervaded the south- 
ern States for the acknowledgement of Texan in- 
dependence ; — an impatience in which the north- 
13* 



150 MANAGEMENT TO EFFECT 

ern speculators fully participated. Acknowledge- 
ment it was seen, must precede annexation, since 
the latter could only be effected by a treaty with 
Texas as an independent power. Still policy re- 
quired that this measure should be cautiously 
managed, lest the North should become alarmed 
at this scheme for vesting the whole political 
power of the Union in the hands of the slave- 
holders, and the northern members of Congress 
be found for once refractory. 

Congress met in December, 1836, and on the 
22d of the same month, President Jackson sent 
them a special message in relation to Texas. He 
remarked : " Prudence seems to dictate that we 
should still stand aloof, and maintain our present at- 
titude, if not till Mexico, or one of the great foreign 
powers shall recognise the independence of the 
new Government, at least until the lapse of time, 
or the course of events shall have proved beyond 
all cavil or dispute, the ability of that country to 
maintain their separate sovereignty, and to uphold 
the Govci nment constituted by them. ' 

This message dissipated all apprehensions on the 
part of the friends of freedom, of a speedy ac- 
knowledgement, and relieved Congress from the 
remonstrances and petitions with which their ta- 
bles would otherwise have been loaded. 



THE RECOGNITION OF TEXAS. 151 

It was obvious, however, that if we could con- 
trive to become embroiled in a war with Mexi- 
co, we might then seize upon Texas, and hold it 
by right of conquest, without any violation of our 
neutral obligations : and that by this process, the 
annexation might be effected with even more fa- 
cility than by a compact with Texas as an inde- 
pendent power. Accordingly about two weeks 
after the late message, the President sent another 
to Congress on our grievances against Mexico — 
grievances about which the people at large knew 
and cared nothing. This message recommended 
the passage of a law authorizing the President to 
employ a naval force against Mexico if she re- 
fused "to come to an amicable adjustment of the 
matters in controversy between us, upon another 
demand thereof, made from on board one of our 
vessels of war on the coast of Mexico" This 
proposition was coldly received, neither Congress 
nor the nation seeming to approve of such a no- 
vel and summary way of declaring war ; and no 
one having the slightest desire for war, except 
those who were anxious for the annexation. It 
being found that a war could not be had, another 
game was played. The session was to close on 
the 3d March. The strongest opposition to Texas 
was to be apprehended in the Lower House. 



152 MANAGEMENT TO EFFECT 

Four days before the termination of the session, 
a motion was there made to add a clause to the 
appropriation bill, making provision for the salary 
of a diplomatic agent to Texas. There was no 
time for long speeches, and the motion was 
adopted with the amendment " to be sent by the 
President whenever he shall receive satisfactory 
evidence that Texas is an independent power, 
and shall see fit to open a diplomatic intercourse 
with her." The late message proved that the 
President had not yet received " the satisfactory 
evidence," and anticipated it only from the action 
of the great foreign powers, or " the lapse of 
time." Little hesitation therefore was felt in 
leaving the subject under the control of the Ex- 
ecutive. The House of Representatives, in which 
there was a majority of northern members, hav- 
ing been thus managed, and a salary secured for 
a Minister to Texas ; the veil was thrown aside 
in the Senate, and two days before the end of the 
session, it was "Resolved, that the State of Texas, 
having established and maintained an independent 
government, capable of performing those duties, 
foreign and domestic, which appertain to inde- 
pendent governments, and it appearing that there 
is no longer any reasonable prospect of the suc- 
cessful termination of the war by Mexico against 



THE RECOGNITION OF TEXAS. 153 

said State, it is expedient and proper, and in con- 
formity with the laws of nations and the prece- 
dents of this Government in like cases, that the 
independent political existence of said State, be 
acknowledged by the Government of the United 
States." 

As the whole tenourof this resolution was in di- 
rect opposition to the message of the 22d Decem- 
ber, and as nothing had occurred since that date 
to weaken the positions assumed in the message, 
one of the Senators in opposing the resolution, 
very naturally alluded to the views entertained 
by the President. On this, Mr. Walker, a Sena- 
tor from Mississippi, rose in his place and de- 
clared, that " he had it from the President's own 
lips, that if he ivere a Senator, he would vote for 
this resolution //" 

At eleven o'clock of the night of the 3d March, 
an hour before his term of office expired, and just 
as the Senate was about adjourning, the Presi- 
dent sent them the nomination of a Minister to 
Texas. 

The conduct of the Federal Government to- 
wards Texas and Hayti, places in a strong light 
the influence of slavery on oiir national councils. 
The latter State has been independent both in 
name and in fact for thirty-seven years, yet we 



154 DIFFERENCE OF CONDUCT 

still refuse to recognise her. Twelve months af- 
ter Texas declared her independence, she was 
received by us into the family of nations, and 
honoured by an interchange of diplomatic agents. 
For thirty-five years, the soil of Hayti has not 
been trodden by an invader ; only ten months 
before the acknowledgement of Texas, a Mexican 
army was carrying terror and destruction through 
its territory. That army had indeed been de- 
feated, but another was preparing to renew the 
contest. Hayti had long been at peace with all 
the world. Mexico claimed Texas as its own, 
and solemnly avowed its determination to chas- 
tise and suppress the revolt. Hayti achieved her 
independence after a long and arduous struggle 
with powerful armies, and has a population of a 
million to maintain it. Texas, when acknowledg- 
ed, could appeal only to the fortunate result of a 
single battle as evidence of her national power, 
while she had no more than 60,000 inhabitants 
to contend against the eight millions of Mexico. 
With Hayti, we had a large and valuable com- 
merce, while our commerce with Texas was only 
in expectancy. Yet has slavery estranged our 
Government from the one nation, and led it to 
welcome to its embrace another, incomparably 
inferior in political strength and moral worth. 



TOWARDS HAYTI AND TEXAS. 155 

The indecent haste with which Texas was ac- 
knowledged, and the trickery by which the ac- 
knowledgement was effected, were prompted by 
the desire of annexation. A southern journal 
speaks thus frankly on the subject. " Does any 
sober observer contend — can he in the face of 
facts, that Texas has substantially, according to 
the usages of nations, accomplished her indepen- 
dence ? Was there not an even chance, to put 
the matter on the most favourable footing, that 
the victory of Jacinto might this campaign be re- 
versed ? But natural feeling has outstripped the 
prudence of our Government, usually discreet and 
judicious, and social sympathy has done what po- 
litical precedent, and possibly expediency, might 
not have sanctioned. The debate in the British 
Parliament shows how well State papers and offi- 
cial ceremonies " (viz. the President's Message,) 
u may delude, or seem to delude foreign govern- 
ments. While Lord Palmerston and O'Connel 
were defending our Government from any im- 
proper haste in acknowledging the independence 
of Texas, the deed is consummated !" — The Port 
Gibson (Miss.) Southerner. 

The whole slave region, with scarcely an ex- 
ception, demanded a union with the new State. 
" The very reasons," said the Charleston Mercu- 



156 EFFORTS TO EFFECT 

ry, " so intemperately urged by the North against 
it, that it will increase the political weight of the 
southern States, and perpetuate and extend the 
curse of slavery, are our best reasons for it" 

The legislatures of South Carolina, Mississippi, 
and Tennessee, all passed resolutions in favour of 
the annexation. Many individuals at the North 
had likewise a deep pecuniary interest in the 
question. They had speculated largely in ^exas 
lands, but their title would be of but little value, 
so long as they depended on the faith of the law- 
less adventurers who possessed the country. — 
Could that country be received into the Union, 
and subjected to the acts of Congress and the ju- 
risdiction of the Supreme Court, their purchases 
might ensure to themselves or their families, 
princely estates. A writer in the Salem Gazette, 
(Mass.) probably a speculator, in vindicating the 
annexation, thus appealed to the avarice of New- 
England. "It is calculated that the value of one 
kind of property in the South, slaves, will be en- 
hanced so much, that that portion of our country 
will realize one or two hundred millions of dol- 
lars ; and the South cannot be enriched without 
benefiting the North — the money will naturally 
come here at last." 

The people of Texas were no less desirous of 



ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 157 

annexation than southern slaveholders, or north- 
ern speculators. The plan of union was avowed 
from almost the very commencement of the re- 
bellion. In August, 1836, S. F. Austin, in an ad- 
dress offering himself as a candidate for the Pres- 
idency, told the people : — " I am in favour of the 
annexation, and will do all in my power to effect 
it with the least possible delay." W. H. Jack, a 
candidate for the legislature, declared : " I am 
decidedly and unequivocally in favour of annex- 
ing Texas to the United States." Gen. Houston, 
the Commander-in-chief, intimated that "the an- 
nexation was essential to the interests of the new 
country." The Texan Congress resolved, "that 
the President of the Republic of Texas be em- 
powered and authorized to despatch a commis- 
sioner or commissioners to the United States of 
America, to obtain a negotiation of our indepen- 
dence, and enter into a treaty with that Govern- 
ment for a union on a footing with the original 
States." The first condition prescribed for this 
proposed union, was, "the free and unmolested 

AUTHORITY OVER TI1EIR SLAVE POPULATION !" 

On the 4th August, 1837, the negotiation was 

opened by the Texan Minister at Washington, by 

a proposition " to unite the two people under one 

and the same government." The acceptance of 

14 



158 ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 

U 

this proposition would of course have been equiva- 
lent to a declaration of war against Mexico ; a 
responsibility which Mr. Van Buren did not see 
fit to assume, especially in the recess of Congress. 
He declined entering into the negotiation, on the 
grounds that the United States were, at present, 
at peace with Mexico, and that that power had not 
acknowledged the independence of Texas. As 
this answer merely postponed the annexation on 
account of an obstacle easily removed, it was en- 
tirely satisfactory to the South, and the more so 
as the President's message to Congress on the 
4th of the ensuing December, wore a very belli- 
gerent aspect towards Mexico. 

This formal attempt at annexation roused the 
fears of the North, and innumerable remonstrances 
against the measure were presented to Congress. 
In the meantime Mexico, by proposing a submis- 
sion of her differences with the United States to 
arbitration, removed all pretence for immediate 
war. Under these circumstances, the southern 
delegation in Congress thought it most prudent 
not to press the annexation. The Texans, more- 
over, finding themselves unmolested by Mexico, 
who had become involved in war with France; 
and observing the strong hostility manifested to- 
wards the measure in the United States, formally 



TEXAN AND CANADIAN REBELS. 159 

withdrew her application for admission into the 
Union. It is folly, however, to suppose that the 
project of annexation is abandoned either by the 
South, or by Texas ; nor does it need the gift of 
prophecy to foresee that the first favourable op- 
portunity of making war upon Mexico, will be 
readily embraced by the Federal Government. 
Should such a war be effected, the dominion of 
the whip may, perhaps, be extended from Mary- 
land to Panama. 

It may not be amiss here to compare the conduct 
of the Federal Government towards the Texan and 
the Canadian rebels. The first were slaveholders 
re-establishing slavery on a soil from which it had 
been banished ; and they enjoyed from the first 
the sympathy of our government, who took care 
to interpose no real obstacle to an invasion on 
their behalf from the United States : while for 
the purpose of aiding them it laboured to excite 
an immediate war with Mexico. The Canadian 
rebels were professedly fighting for liberty, and 
should they succeed, there was no probability that 
negro slavery would crown their triumph. They, 
like the Texans, looked to us for aid ; but the 
President, now alive to the obligations of neu- 
trality, and finding the existing laws insufficient 
to enforce them, applied to Congress and received 



160 MEXICO AND GREAT BRITAIN. 

additional powers. Troops were sent to the 
frontiers, not to swell by desertion the ranks of 
the rebels, but in good faith, forcibly to prevent 
American citizens from abetting the revolt. A 
war with Mexico was desired by the slavehold- 
ers, and the President was for negotiating on 
board an armed vessel. A war with Great Bri- 
tain, emphatically an anti-slavery nation, is now 
viewed with horror and dismay by the whole 
South,* and the Executive has sedulously endeav- 
oured to avoid it. 

We have now presented numerous instances 
of the action of the Federal Government in be- 
half of slavery ; but our task is not completed. 
We are still to view that Government, which, in 
the language of the Constitution, was established 
" to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves 
and our posterity ;" assailing the constitutional 
rights of the citizen, in order to rivet the fetters 
of the slave ; striving to extinguish the freedom 
of the press, the freedom of debate, and the 
right of petition, to perpetuate property in human 
flesh. These, we are sensible, are strong asser- 

* A distinguished southern senator, speaking of the importance 
of preserving our neutrality on the Canada frontier, declared that 
in his opinion •' a war with England would be the heaviest calam- 
ity that could befall the country." 



CHARLESTON POST-OFFICE. 161 

tions — we solicit attention to the facts on which 
they are founded, and first to 

The attempt of the Federal Government to 

ESTABLISH A CENSORSHIP OF THE TRESS. 

In the summer of 1835, the Anti-slavery Soci- 
ety in New- York, directed their publisher to for- 
ward a number of their periodical papers, con- 
taining facts and disquisitions on the subject of 
slavery, to various southern gentlemen of distinc- 
tion, in the hope of exciting by this means, a 
spirit of inquiry among persons of influence and 
character. But it was precisely such a spirit of 
inquiry, that the advocates of perpetual bondage 
feared might be fatal to their favourite institution. 
Hence they affected to believe that the papers 
sent to the masters, were intended to excite the 
slaves to insurrection, and they succeeded in 
maddening the populace to fury. A mob broke 
into the Charleston Post-Ofnce, and seizing a quan- 
tity of anti-slavery papers, burned them in the 
street. This outrage was virtually approved by 
the City Council ; and at a public meeting, a com- 
mittee of "gentlemen" was appointed to take 
charge of the northern mail on its arrival, ac- 
company it to the Post-Office, and see that no 
14* 



162 mr. Kendall's letter. 

papers advocating the rights of man, should be 
delivered to their owners. The Post-Master in- 
formed the head of the department, that under 
existing circumstances, he had determined to sup- 
press all anti-slavery publications, and asked for 
instructions for the future. It should here be re- 
collected that of all the political advisers of the 
President, Mr. Kendall, at this time acting as 
Post-Master General, was the most odious to the 
opposite party. He had been appointed during 
the recess of the Senate, and it was regarded as 
a matter of course, that on the meeting of that 
body, in which the opposition had a majority, his 
nomination would be rejected. The constitution 
forbade a censorship of the press, and had the 
people been disposed to delegate so formidable a 
power, they certainly would not have vested it 
in the 10,000 deputies of the Post-Master General. 
The law moreover expressly required every post- 
master to deliver the papers received by him, to 
the persons to whom they were directed. 

Such were the circumstances under which Mr. 
Kendall returned his famous answer. After stat- 
ing that not having seen the papers in question, 
he could not judge of their character, but had 
been informed that they were incendiary, inflam- 
matory, and insurrectionary, he added : " By no 



mr. Kendall's letter. 163 

act or direction of mine, official or private, co:ild I 
be induced to aid knowingly in giving circulation 
to papers of this description, directly or indirect- 
ly. We owe an obligation to the laws, but a 
higher one to the communities in which we live ; 
and if the former be perverted to destroy the 
latter, it is patriotism to disregard them. Enter- 
taining these views, I cannot sanction and will 
not condemn the step you have taken." This let- 
ter taught the Senate that the new officer was 
willing to conduct the Post-Office in a manner 
calculated to protect the "domestic institution" 
from the assaults of truth and argument, and his 
nomination was confirmed. Mr. Kendall was at 
the date of his letter, a member of the Cabinet, 
and it was understood that the novel, extraordi- 
nary,and dangerous doctrine of that letter received 
the sanction of the President. 

On the opening of Congress, President Jackson 
in his message, recommended the " passing of 
such a law as will prohibit under severe penal- 
ties, the circulation in the southern Slates through 
the mails, of incendiary publications intended to 
instigate the slaves to insurrection." The propo- 
sed law it seems, was not to prohibit the printing 
of certain papers, nor their committal to the mails 
in the northern States, but only their circulation 



164 president's calumny 

in the slave region. Of course certain persons, 
post-masters we presume, were to be required 
under " heavy penalties," to stop these papers ; 
and they were necessarily to be judges of the 
character of the papers, and of the intentions of 
their writers. From what code of despotism did 
our very democratic President derive his plan for 
destroying the efficiency of the Press? By a 
contemptible quibble, this plan was to evade the 
constitutional guarantee of the freedom of the 
press. It was not to interfere with the press — 
not at ail — it was merely to prevent the circu- 
lation of its productions! The press was still to 
be free to pour forth its arguments against slave- 
ry* only " heavy penalties " were to prevent the 
people from reading them! The reason moreo- 
ver assigned for this proposed high-handed act of 
tyranny, was a most malignant and wilful calum- 
ny. It was to prevent the circulation in the 
southern States of publications intended to excite 
the slaves to insurrection. Such a proposal from 
the first magistrate of the country to Congress, 
and following the affair at Charleston, and Mr. 
Kendall's letter, irresistably fixes upon the mem- 
bers of the American Anti-slavery Society at 
New-York, the charge of sending papers into the 
southern States for the purpose and with the de- 



AGAINST THE ABOLITIONISTS. 1G5 

sire of effecting the massacre of their fellow-citi- 
zens. If the President really believed that such 
was the object of the New-York abolitionists, and 
such the character of their publications, and if he 
thought it his official duty to bring the subject be- 
fore Congress, he owed it to himself, to the coun- 
try, to truth and to justice, to have submitted to 
Congress the facts and documents, on which he 
founded his proposed invasion of the constitution- 
al rights of his fellow-citizens. But he cautiously 
avoided specifying a single fact, or quoting a 
single sentence in support of his tremendous accu- 
sation, or in justification of his most unwarranta- 
ble proposition ; and when written to by the act- 
ing committee of the New-York Society for proof 
of his charge against them, he deemed it most 
prudent not to return an answer ! Surely the 
burden of proof rests upon him, who in a solemn 
official address to the Legislature, holds up a por- 
tion of his fellow-citizens as miscreants engaged 
in plotting murder and insurrection ; and urges 
the enaction of a law to counteract their execra- 
ble machinations. 

It is often difficult to prove a negative ; but in 
this instance, the falsehood of the President's 
charge is amply demonstrated by an official doc- 
ument from the slaveholders themselves. We 



166 INSURRECTIONARY LANGUAGE 

give this document, not to exculpate the members 
of the New- York Society from a calumny which 
their own characters abundantly refute, but to show 
in a strong light the unprincipled means to w r hich 
the Federal Government is capable of resorting 
to uphold the "peculiar institution" of the South. 
A grand jury in Alabama, conceived the bright 
idea, that the publication of tracts at the North 
against slavery might be arrested, by indicting the 
publishers as felons, and then demanding them 
from the Governors of their respective States as 
fugitives from southern justice. It w r as necessary, 
however, to specify in the indictment, the precise 
crime of which they had been guilty ; a necessity 
which the President regarded as not applicable 
to his message. We may well suppose therefore, 
that the grand jury wo Ad endeavour to secure the 
success of this, their first experiment, by selecting 
from the various publications alluded to by the 
President and Mr. Kendall, as sent to the South 
for the purpose of exciting insurrection, the most 
insurrectionary, cut-throat passages, they cculd 
find. Behold the result. 

il State of Alabama, ) Circuit Court, September 
Tuscaloosa county. \ Term, 1835. 

The grand jurors, * * * * upon their 



IN THE STATE OF ALABAMA. 107 

oath present, that Robert G. Williams, late of said 
county, being a wicked, malicious, seditious, and 
ill-disposed person, and being greatly disaffected 
to the laws and government of said State, and fe- 
loniously, wickedly, maliciously, and seditiously 
contriving, devising, and intending to produce 
conspiracy, insurrection, and rebellion among the 
slave population of said State, and to alienate and 
withdraw the affection, fidelity, and allegiance, 
of said slaves from their masters and owners, on 
the tenth day of September, in the year of our 
Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-five, 
at the county aforesaid, feloniously, wickedly, ma- 
liciously, and seditiously did cause to be distribu- 
ted, circulated, and published, a seditious paper, 
called "The Emancipator," in which paper is 
published according to the tenour and effect fol- 
lowing, that is to say : " God commands, and all na- 
ture cries out, that man should not he held as pro- 
perty. The system of making men property, has 
plunged 2,250,000 of our fellow-countrymen into 
the deepest physical and moral degradation, and 
they are every moment sinking deeper T In open 
violation of the Act of the General Assembly in 
such case made and provided, to the evil and per- 
nicious example of all others in like case offend- 



168 ACTION OF THE SENATE 

ing, and against the peace and dignity of the State 
of Alabama."* 

In the Senate, the recommendation of the Pre- 
sident was referred to a committee, who reported 
a bill prohibiting postmasters from delivering 
44 any pamphlet, newspaper, handbill, or other 
printed paper, or pictorial representation, touching 
the subject of slavery in any State, in which their 
circulation is prohibited by law," The object of 
this bill was by means of federal legislation, to 
build around the slave States a rampart against 
the assaults of light and truth. Its absurdity was 
equalled only by its wickedness. Not a newspa- 
per containing a debate in Congress, a report 
from a committee, a message from the President, 
a letter from the West Indies, 4 , 4 touching the sub- 
ject of slavery," could be legally delivered from a 
southern post-office ; and thousands of postmasters 
were to be employed in opening envelopes, and 
poring over their contents, to catch a reference 
to the " domestic institution." 

By this bill, the Federal Government virtually 

♦Another count was added for distributing " The Emancipator," 
but without giving any extracts. It is scarcely necessary to add, 
that "Williams had never been in Alabama. Yet on this indict- 
ment, he was demanded of the New- York Executive as a fugitive 
felon, by the Governor of Alabama. 



CENSORSHIP OF THE PRESS. 1G9 

surrendered to the States, the freedom of the 
press, and nullified the guarantee of this inestima- 
ble privilege, given by our fathers in the Constitu- 
tion to every citizen. This bill, moreover, pre- 
pared the way for the destruction of civil and re- 
ligious liberty. If every paper touching the sub- 
ject of slavery might be suppressed, then the 
same fate might just as constitutionally be awarded 
to every paper touching the conduct of the admin- 
istration, or the doctrine of the Trinity. It es- 
tablished a censorship of the press on one subject, 
which might afterwards be extended to others. 
Yet this bill, absurd and unconstitutional as it was, 
went through its regular stages with little opposi- 
tion, till the important question was taken on its 
engrossment; — the vote stood 18 to 18. The 
casting vote was now required from Mr. Van Bu- 
ren, who, as Vice President, occupied the chair. 
He gave it for the slaveholders, and received from 
them at the ensuing election, sixty-one electoral 
votes, by means of which, he became President 
of the United States.* On the final question, 
the bill was rejected, and this attempt to trammel 

* The two Senators from New- York, Messrs. Wright and Tall- 

madge, political friends of Mr. Van Buren, supported the bill. It 

is due to justice to mention, that the bill was finally lost by tho 

votes of several southern Senators. 

15 



170 RIGHT OF PETITION AND 

the press for the protection of slavery, defeated. 
A very different result however, has attended 

The effort of the Federal Government to 
nullify the right of petition and the free- 
dom of debate. 

For thirty years past, petitions have been 
presented to Congress for the abolition of sla- 
very in the District of Columbia, and the na- 
tional territories ; and until latterly, were receiv- 
ed and treated like other petitions. But hav- 
ing within a few years prodigiously increased 
in number, and some northern members having 
shown a disposition to advocate their prayer, a 
most extraordinary course has been pursued in re- 
lation to them. The reason of this course is ex- 
plained by the following passage from a speech 
by Mr. Strange, a Senator from North Carolina. 
"Every agitation of this subject (slavery,) weak- 
ens the moral force in our favour ; and breaks 
down the moral barriers which now serve to pro- 
tect and secure us. We have every thing to lose, 
and noticing to gain by agitation and discussion:' 

The frankness of this confession is as remarka- 
ble as its truth is unquestionable ; and it shows us 
why the advocates of slavery instead of meet- 
ing their opponents in argument, have sought to 



FHEEDOM OF DEBATE. 171 

silence them by brute force, and penal enact- 
ments. 

One of the most unequivocal and undoubted ofall 
constitutional rights is that of petition, and it is more- 
over, expressly guaranteed by the constitution. But 
this right has been most audaciously nullified by 
both branches of the national legislature. The 
Senate have not, it is true, avowedly refused to 
receive anti-slavery petitions, but they have adopt- 
ed a course which answers the same purpose. 
The practice for some years past has been to lay 
the question of reception on the table without de- 
ciding it, and the petition not being in fact re- 
ceived, cannot be discussed, nor any measure re- 
specting it taken. This course is no less at vari- 
ance with the constitutional rights of the petition- 
ers, than it is with those of the members of tho 
Senate. The rights of petition and freedom of 
debate are both nullities, if the body to which a 
prayer is addressed, is prohibited from listening 
to it, and the individual members are prohibited 
from noticing it. Would it be no violation of the 
Constitution were the Senate to order that every 
petition, " touching the subject of slavery," should 
be delivered to their doorkeeper, to be committed 
by him to the flames ? And yet in what particu- 
lar, are the rights of the petitioners more respect- 



172 RIGHT OF PETITION AND 

ed by the practice we have mentioned ? The pe- 
titions are not indeed burned, but they are left in 
the pockets of those to whom they were entrust- 
ed ; and not being received, the Senate is sup- 
posed to be ignorant of their contents, and of 
course no member is permitted to discuss their 
merits, or to propose any measure founded upon 
them. Let us now turn to what is regarded as 
the popular branch, — the House of Representa- 
tives, — intended to be the special guardian of the 
liberties of the people, as the Senate is of the 
rights of the States. 

In May, 1836, a committee reported to the 
House, a resolution prefaced with this extraordi- 
nary avowal : " Whereas it is extremely import- 
ant and desirable, that the agitation on this sub- 
ject (slavery) should be finally arrested for the 
purpose of restoring tranquillity to the public 
mind, your committee respectfully recommend the 
following resolution." 

Here then is an acknowledged, unblushing in- 
terference by the Federal Government, in behalf 
of slavery ; an avowed interference to arrest 
that agitation, which we are assured by Mr. 
Strange, " breaks down the moral barriers," 
which serve to protect and secure a system of 
iniquitous cruelty and oppression. To arrest 



FREEDOM OF DEBATE, 173 

this agitation, the committee did not scruple to 
recommend a measure, breaking down the consti- 
tutional barriers erected to protect and secure the 
rights and liberties of the people of the United 
States. The resolution reported by the commit- 
tee, was adopted by the House, on the 26th of 
May, 1836, and is in these words : 

" Resolved, that all petitions, memorials, resolu- 
tions, and propositions relating in any way, or to 
any extent whatever, to the subject of slavery, 
shall without being either printed or referred, 
be laid on the table, and that no farther action 
whatever shall be had thereon." Ayes 117 — 
Nays 68. 

It is worthy of remark, that of the ayes, no less 
than 62 were from the free States ! The advo- 
cates of this resolution, conscious that it could 
bear discussion as little as slavery itself, caused it 
to be adopted through the operation of the previ- 
ous question, by a silent vote. 

We have exhibited the character of slavery and 
the slave trade at the seat of the Federal Gov- 
ernment, and have shown that Congress is the lo- 
cal legislature of the District of Columbia, hav- 
ing "exclusive jurisdiction over it in all cases 
whatever." Now one of the peculiar atrocities of 
this resolution is, that it wrests from every mem- 
15* 



174 RIGHT OF PETITION AND 

ber of the House, his constitutional right to pro- 
pose such measures for the government of the Dis- 
trict as justice and humanity may require. Slaves 
might be burned alive in the streets of the Capital; 
the slavers might be crowded to suffocation with 
human victims; every conceivable cruelty might 
be practised, and no one member of the local legis- 
lature could be permitted to propose even a com- 
mittee of inquiry, "relating in any way, or to any 
extent whatever, to the subject of slavery !" 

The fact that 62 northern members on this oc- 
casion, arrayed themselves on the side of the 
slaveholders, affords a melancholy and alarming 
proof of the corrupting influence which slavery is 
exerting on the morality and patriotism of the 
free States. 

This foolish and wicked expedient to "restore 
tranquillity " to the people, by trampling on their 
rights and gagging their representatives, failed of 
success. The petitioners at this session w 7 ere 
34,000, — at the next the number was swelled to 

ONE HUNDRED AND TEN THOUSAND ! and the gag 

was renewed. During the session of 1837-8, 
the number rose to three hundred thousand. 
Early in the last mentioned session, a member 
from Vermont, presented a petition for the abo- 
lition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and 



FREEDOM OF DEBATE. 175 

took the liberty to offer some remarks on the 
subject of slavery. This attempt to break down 
" the moral barriers," threw the southern members 
into great trepidation, and the scene which en- 
sued, illustrates the system of intimidation, to 
which we have already adverted. The Speaker 
was interrupted by a gentleman from Virginia, 
calling aloud, and asking his colleagues to retire 
with him from the hall ; — another from Georgia 
exclaimed, that he hoped the whole southern dele- 
gation would do the same ; — a third from South 
Carolina declared, that all the representatives 
from that State ' had already signed an agreement.' 
The House adjourned, and a southern member 
invited the gentlemen from the slaveholding 
States to meet immediately in an adjoining room. 
The meeting was held, but its proceedings were not 
made public. The result, however, was manifest 
in the introduction next morning, of another gag 
resolution, directing all memorials, petitions, and 
papers touching the abolition of slavery in the 
national territories, and of the American slave 
trade, to be laid on the table, without being print- 
ed, read, debated, or referred, and that no farther 
action should be had thereon. Through the ac- 
quiescence of northern members, it was passed 
by a silent vote. 



170 RIGHT OF PETITION AND 

At the beginning of the next session, a meeting 
of the admininistration members was held, at 
which it was determined to renew the gag; and 
as a proof of the devotion of the democratic party 
at the North to the cause of slavery, it was ar- 
ranged that now, for the first time, the odious 
measure should be proposed by a northern man : 
nay, not merely a northern man, but a native 
of New-England — a representative from New- 
Hampshire. The resolution was accordingly in- 
troduced, and was passed on the 12th December, 
1838, and has given notoriety to the name of 
Atherton. 

Thus we see a persevering, systematic effort 
on the part of Congress to protect slavery by 
suppressing debate, and throwing contempt upon 
the petitions of hundreds of thousands of Ameri- 
can citizens. That this should be done by slave- 
holders was perhaps to have been expected ; but 
that they should be aided in such a desperate 
assault upon constitutional liberty by northern 
men, for the paltry consideration of southern votes 
and southern trade, is mortifying and alarming. 
The meeting of extremes is a trite illustration of 
human inconsistency. If, in Doc!or Johnson's 
time, the loudest yelps for liberty were heard 
from the drivers of slaves ; the loudest yelps in the 
northern States against aristocracy, chartered mo- 



FREEDOM OF DEBATE. 177 

nopolies and oppression of the poor, are now 
heard from men who have laboured to perpetuate 
the bondage of millions, by gag laws, and restric- 
tions on the freedom of speech and the press. 
These men are acting from party views, and are 
rushing to battle under the war cry of "Van 
Buren and slavery," in hopes, through southern 
auxiliaries, of enjoying the spoils of victory. Oth- 
ers again, without the slightest sympathy in the 
political principles of these men, and with their 
ears stuffed, and their hearts padded with cotton, 
are cooperating with them in behalf of slavery, 
from their love of southern trade.* We will here 
close our protracted investigation with a brief 

Recapitulation of the action of the Federal 
Government in behalf of slavery. 

This action we have found exhibited (omitting 
constitutional provisions) in 

1. Its effort to degrade the free people of colour 

* The following arc strong and amusing instances of the meet- 
ing of extremes. In the Spring of 1837, the whig merchants of 
New- York, sent a deputation to Washington to request the Pre- 
sident to adopt certain measures to relieve the commercial embar- 
rassments of the country. The request was declined, and a great 
meeting was convened to receive the report of the deputation. 



178 ACTION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 

by excluding them from the militia ; prohibiting them 
from driving a mail waggon — denying naturaliza- 
tion to foreigners of their complexion — subjecting 
them to odious disqualifications and restrictions in 
the City of Washington ; and above all in permit- 
ting them without trial, at the discretion of the 
marshal, to be sold as slaves to pay their jail fees. 

2. In its tolerance of slavery in territories under 
its exclusive jurisdiction. 

3. In its arbitrary, unconstitutional, and wicked 
laws for the arrest of fugitive slaves. 

The report which was adopted by the meeting, recommended ef- 
forts to displace Mr. Van Buren, and as one means of effecting 
this object, exhorted the merchants to " appeal to our brethren of 
the South for their generous co-operation ; and promise them that 
those who believe the possession of property of any kind'' (not 
excepting men, women, and children,) "is an evidence of merit, 
will be the last to interfere with the rights of properly of any kind ; 
discourage any effort to awaken an excitement, the bare idea of 
which should make every husband and father shudder with horror.'' 
In plain English, ifthe slaveholders would make common cause' with 
the New- York merchants against Mr. Van Buren, they in return 
would make common cause with the slaveholders against the abo- 
litionists. But democrats know the value of southern votes quite as 
well as the whigs. Accordingly we find in the Washington Globe 
of Feb. 9, 1839, a speech intended to have been delivered, but pre- 
vented by the gas resolution, by Mr. Eli Moore, a double-refined 
democrat, President ofthe New-York Trades' Union, and represen- 
tative from that City in Congress. This gentleman tills us "the 
wild, enthusiastic, and impetuous spirit which kindled the fires of 



ACTION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 179 

4. In its negotiation with Great Britain and 
Mexico for the surrender of fugitive slaves. 

5. In its invasion of Florida, in pursuit of fugi- 
tive slaves. 

G. In its negotiations with Great Britain, for 
compensation for slaves who had taken refuge on 
board British ships of war. 

7. In its negotiation with Great Britain, for 
compensation for slaves, ship-wrecked in the West 
Indies. 

8. In its tolerance, protection, and regulation of 
the American slave trade. 

Smithficld, and strewed the plains of Palestine with the corses 
of the crusaders, stands with lighted and uplifted torch hard by the 
side of abolitionism, ready to spread conflagration and death around 
the land " — he declares that "so long as the Democratic or State 
Rights' party shall maintain the ascendency, the efforts of the 
abolitionists will be comparatively innoxious :" and he announces 
what will be no less news to the New-York merchants, that it is 
to abolitionists, that " the Federal or National Bank Party, be- 
lieve the Federal Legislature not only have the power to abolish 
slavery in the District of Columbia, but also in the States." 

From the opinions and motives we have ascribed to masses, we 
know there are many exceptions. No community can offer bright- 
er examples of virtue and philanthropy than the merchants of 
New-York ; and he who thinks that there are not among our 
ultra-democrats, men who conscientiously believe the principles 
they profess, and act in consistency with them, does not know 
them. 



180 ACTION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 

9. In its duplicity, with regard to the abolition 
of the African slave trade. 

10. In its efforts to prevent the abolition of 
slavery in Cuba. 

11. In its conduct towards Hayti. 

12. In its conduct towards Texas. 

13. In its attempt to establish a censorship of 
the press. 

14. In its invasion of the right of petition, and 
the freedom of debate. 

Such has been the action in behalf of human 
bondage, of a Government which, in the language 
of the constitution, was formed to establish justice, 
and secure the blessings of liberty. 

And by whom are the men composing the Go- 
vernment which thus perverts the objects of its 
institution, invested with their power ? They are 
the agents, the mere instruments of the people of 
the United States — of the North and the East, 
as well as of the West and the South. This con- 
sideration calls us to consider 

The responsibility of the free States. 

The advocates of slavery and the tools of par- 
ty, are continually telling us, that "the North has 
nothing to do with slavery" A volume might be 



RESPONSIBILITY OF THE FREE STATES. 181 

filled with facts, proving the fallacy of this asser- 
tion. There is scarcely a family among us, that is 
not connected by the ties of friendship, kindred, or 
pecuniary interest, with the land of slaves. That 
land is endeared to us by a thousand recollections 
— with that land we have continual commercial, 
political, religious, and social intercourse. There 
in innumerable instances, are our personal friends, 
our brothers, our sons and our daughters. How 
malignant and foolish then is the falsehood, that the 
thousands and tens of thousands of abolitionists 
among us, are anxious to see that land reeking in 
blood ! But the more intimate are our connexions 
with that land, the more exposed are we to be con- 
taminated by its pollutions ; and the more im- 
peratively are we bound to seek its real welfare. 
Let it then sink deep in our hearts, let it rest 
upon our consciences, that in every wicked and 
cruel act of the Federal Government in behalf 
of slavery, the people of the North have partici- 
pated, — we might almost say that for all this 
wickedness and cruelty, they are solely responsi- 
ble ; since it could not have been perpetrated but 
with the consent of their representatives. Vast 
and fertile territories, which might now have 
been inhabited by a free and happy population^ 



10 



182 RESPONSIBILITY OF THE FREE STATES. 

have by northern votes been converted, to use 
the language of the poet, into 

"A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves." 

By northern Senators, have our African slavers 
been protected from the search of British cruis- 
ers. By northern representatives, is the Ameri- 
can slave trade protected, and the abominations 
enacted in the Capital of the Republic, sanctioned 
and perpetuated: and northern men are the offi- 
ciating ministers in the sacrifice of constitutional 
liberty on the altar of Moloch. But representa- 
tives are only the agents of their constituents, 
speaking their thoughts, and doing their will. 
The people of the North have done " this great 
wickedness." When they repent, when they love 
mercy, and seek after justice, their representa- 
tives will no longer rejoice to aid in transforming 
the image of God into a beast of burden — then 
will the human shambles be overthrown in the 
Capital — then will slavers "freighted with de- 
spair," no longer depart from the port of Alex- 
andria, nor chained coffles parade the streets of 
Washington. Then will the powers of the Fede- 
ral Government be exercised in protecting, not 
in annihilating the rights of man ; and then will 
the slaveholder, deprived of the countenance of the 



DIVISION OF THE UNION. 183 

free States, as he is already of nearly all the rest 
of the civilized world, be led to reflect calmly on 
the character and tendency of the institution he 
now so dearly prizes, and seek his own welfare 
and that of his children in its voluntary and peace- 
ful abolition. 

But here we are confronted with direful pro- 
phecies. Let us then proceed to inquire into 

The probable influence of the Anti-slavery 
agitation on the permanency of the union. 

Before we can predict what this influence will 
be, we must first inquire, what will probably be 
the direction and aim of the agitation ? Every 
State possesses all the powers of independent 
sovereignty, except such as she has delegated to 
the Federal Government. All the powers not 
specified in the Constitution as delegated, are by 
that instrument reserved. Among the powers 
specified, that of abrogating the slave codes of the 
several States, is not included ; on the contrary, 
the guarantee of the continuance of the African 
slave trade for twenty years, the provision for the 
arrest of fugitive slaves, and the establishment of 
the federal ratio of representation, all refer to 
and acknowledge the existence of slavery under 



184 RIGHTS OF THE SOUTH. 

State authority. If therefore the abolitionists* 
unmindful of their solemn and repeated disclaim- 
ers of all power in Congress to legislate for the 
abolition of slavery in the States, should with un- 
exampled perfidy attempt to bring about such le- 
gislation ; and if Congress, regardless of their 
oaths, should ever be guilty of the consummate 
folly and wickedness of passing a law emancipa- 
ting the slaves held under State authority, the 
Union would most unquestionably be rent in 
twain. The South would indeed be craven could 
it submit to such profligate usurpation ; it would 
be compelled to withdraw, not for the preserva- 
tion of slavery alone, but for the protection of all its 
rights; and indeed the liberties of every State would 
be jeoparded under a government, which, spurning 
all constitutional restraints, should assume the 
omnipotence of the British Parliament. But it is 
scarcely w r orth while to anticipate the conse- 
quence of an act which can never be perpetrated 
so long as the people of the North retain an ordi- 
nary share of honesty and intelligence. 

We have, under all the circumstances of the 
case, sufficient reasons for believing that the anti- 
slavery of the North, will carry its action to the 
very limits of the Constitution, but not beyond 
them. In despite of all the coalitions of parties, 



POWERS OF CONGRESS. 185 

and the intrigues of politicians, liberty of speech 
and of the press will be maintained, and the dis- 
cussion of slavery will be extended by the very 
efforts made to arrest it. Let us suppose this dis- 
cussion to be attended with its natural and proba- 
ble result, the conversion of the great mass of the 
northern people to the principles and avowed ob- 
jects of the abolitionists. Of course, those prin- 
ciples and objects will be embraced by their rep- 
resentatives in Congress. In this case, we may 
expect that slavery will be abolished in the District 
of Columbia, and that it will be prohibited in the 
territories hereafter to be formed on the west of the 
Mississippi. Thus far the constitutional power of 
Congress cannot be rationally questioned. Inde- 
penndent of the exclusive jurisdiction over the ter- 
ritories granted to Congress, we have the prece- 
dent of the ordinance of 1787, prohibiting slave- 
ry in the North-west Territory, and the more re- 
cent precedent of the prohibition of it in the Lou- 
isiana territory north of 38|° of north latitude. 
The American slave trade is now, and has been 
for upwards of thirty years, prohibited in vessels 
under forty tons burden. It would not be easy 
to show that the Constitution forbids its prohibi- 
tion in vessels over forty tons burden. We may 
therefore take it for granted, that the Senate's 
16* 



186 DUTY OF CONGRESS. 

coasting trade will be legally abolished. Should 
the land traffic not be also destroyed, it would not 
be for want of disposition, or constitutional power 
in Congress, but on account of the extreme diffi- 
culty which would exist in preventing evasions 
of the law. 

We have now the sum total of national legis- 
lation, which on our present supposition, will re- 
sult from the anti-slavery action at the North. 
Yet we are positively assured that such legisla- 
tion would cause a dissolution of the Union. Now 
admitting the constitutional right, and the moral 
obligation of our national legislators, to pass the 
laws in question, it would be difficult to decide 
by what code of morals they could be excused 
from the discharge of their duty by the apprehen- 
sion of consequences. If God governs the world, 
more is to be feared from rebellion, than from 
obedience to his will. If his wisdom and good- 
ness are both infinite, his will is and must be an 
infallible standard of expediency. If it be folly 
to barter a single soul for the whole world, would 
it be wise to expose a nation to the wrath of 
Heaven, for a boon which we now 7 hold, and 
would continue to hold at the pleasure of men 
who are daily threatening to deprive us of it ? 

But we have no fears that Congress will ever 



MOTIVES FOR A SEPARATION. 187 

find the faithful discharge of their duty, conflict- 
ing with the welfare and preservation of the Union. 
How far selfish and influential individuals may 
succeed in raising up at the South a party for 
secession, it is impossible to predict ; but it is not 
difficult to show that a separation founded on the 
legislation we have specified, would be most pre- 
posterous and disastrous, and therefore we may 
reasonably presume it will not occur. 

Should the South secede, they would do so we 
may suppose, for one or more of the following 
reasons, viz. 

1. To protect their rights from invasion. 

2. To guard and perpetuate the institution of 
slavery. 

3. To increase their wealth and power. 

The North is the strongest portion of the con- 
federacy ; and whenever, unmindful of the federal 
compact, it wickedly and forcibly usurps power 
to the prejudice of the Souths secession is the on- 
ly resource left to the latter for the protection of 
its rights. But a disregard to the wishes, does 
not necessarily imply a violation of the rights of 
the South. Not one of the measures we have 
contemplated as the probable result of the anti- 
slavery agitation, encroaches on the constitutional 
rights of the South; and therefore secession, how- 



188 ADMISSIONS OF SLAVEHOLDERS. 

ever it might be professedly justified, would in 
fact be prompted by other motives than that of 
self-defence. But so long as the Federal Gov- 
ernment confines its action against slavery within 
the limits of the Constitution, in what way would 
secession tend to guard and perpetuate the insti- 
tution ? 

It is natural that the slaveholders should wish 
to destroy the influence of the abolitionists, and 
hence they have very unjustifiably expressed 
fears respecting them which they do not feel, and 
circulated calumnies which they do not believe. 
The following admissions reveal the true nature 
of the apprehensions entertained by the slave- 
holders. 

Mr. Calhoun, alluding in the Senate to opinions 
expressed by some of his southern colleagues, ex- 
claimed : " Do they expect the abolitionists will 
resort to arms, and commence a crusade to liber- 
ate our slaves by force ? Is this what they mean 
when they speak of the attempt to abolish slave- 
ry ? If so, let me tell our friends of the South 
who differ from us, that the war which the abo- 
litionists wage against us, is of a very different 
character, and far more effective — it is waged 
not against our lives, but our character.'' 

Mr. Duff Green, the editor of the United 



ADMISSIONS OF SLAVEHOLDERS. 189 

States Telegraph, and the great champion of sla- 
very, thus expressed himself in his paper. M We 
are of those who believe the South has nothing 
to fear from a servile war. We do not believe 
that the abolitionists intend, nor could they if they 
w r ould, excite the slaves to insurrection. The 
danger of this is remote. We believe that we 
have most to fear from the organized action upon 
the consciences and fears of the slaveholders 
themselves ; from the insinuation of their danger- 
ous heresies into our schools, our pulpits, and our 
domestic circles. It is only by alarming the con- 
sciences of the weak and feeble, and diffusing 
among our people a morbid sensibility on the 
question of slavery, that the abolitionists can ac- 
complish their object."* 

We would now respectfully submit to Mr. Cal- 
houn's consideration, whether a secession w r ould 
tend in any way to defend the characters of 
slaveholders from the war he contends is waged 
against them ; or fortify their consciences against 
the "dangerous heresies" by which they are as- 
sailed ? 

*The New- York whig merchants may learn from this candid 
avowal, that the " bare idea " of the abolition excitement docs not 
make every "husband and father shudder with horror" at the 
South, whatever it may do in Wall-street. 



190 CONSEQUENCES OF A SEPARATION. 

The new slave nation would acquire from her se- 
parate independence, no new power to darken the 
understandings, or benumb the consciences of her 
citizens. The freedom of the press throughout the 
whole slave region, is already extinguished. Not 
one single newspaper, from Maryland to Florida, 
dares to raise its voice in favour of immediate 
emancipation ; and a southern publication, for ex- 
pressing views unfavourable to slavery, notwith- 
standing its bitter denunciations of abolitionists, 
was lately taken from a post-office in Virginia, 
and in pursuance of the laws of the State, com- 
mitted to the flames by order of the public au- 
thorities ; and when the laws are silent, lynch 
clubs are ready to visit with infamous and cruel 
penalties, the man who presumes to advocate the 
inalienable rights of man. What new ramparts 
could the southern confederacy build around their 
beloved institution? What new weapons could 
they forge against freedom of discussion ? 

At the North, the discussion of slavery is now 
greatly restricted by political and mercenary con- 
siderations ; but such considerations would be 
dissipated in a moment by secession. The very 
demagogues who are now fawning upon the 
slaveholders for their votes, would, when they 
had no longer votes to bestow, seek popularity 
in ultra hatred to slavery. 



CONSEQUENCES OF A SEPARATION. 191 

The anti-slavery agitation at the North, is at 
present chiefly confined to the religious portion of 
the community ; it would then extend to all class- 
es, and be embittered by national animosity. — 
Slavery would appear more odious and detesta- 
ble than ever, after having destroyed the fair 
fabric of American Union, and severed the bonds 
of kindred and of friendship, to rivet more firmly 
the fetters of the bondman. 

The slaveholders are now our fellow-country- 
men and citizens ; they would then be foreigners 
who had discarded our friendship and connexion, 
that they might trample with more unrestrained 
violence upon the rights and liberties of their fel- 
low-men. These considerations show that any 
expectation of extinguishing or weakening the 
anti-slavery feeling at the North by separation, 
must be utterly futile. 

A separation would moreover deprive the in- 
stitution of the protection of the Federal Govern- 
ment. Should the slaves attempt to revolt, the 
masters would be left to struggle with them, un- 
aided by the fleets and armies of the whole Re- 
public. 

And by what power would the master recap- 
ture his fugitive who had crossed the boundary of 
the new empire ? Now he may hunt him through 



192 CONSEQUENCES OF A SEPARATION. 

the whole confederacy, nor is the trembling wretch 
secure of his liberty, till he beholds the British 
standard waving above him. Tlien freedom would 
be the boon of every slave who could swim the 
Ohio, or reach the frontier line of the free repub- 
lic. And this frontier line be it remembered, would 
be continually advancing South. The anti-slavery 
feelings of the North, aggravated as they would 
be by the secession, would afford every possible 
facility to the fugitive, and laws would then be 
•passed, not for the restoration of human property, 
but for the protection of human rights. 

Would the dissolution of the Union afford the 
southern planters a more unrestricted enjoyment 
of the foreign or domestic slave trade ? Alas ! 
from the moment of separation, slave trading be- 
comes piracy in fact, as well as in name, and the 
crews of New-Orleans and Alexandria, as well as 
of African slavers, would swing on northern gib- 
bets. 

We confess then our utter inability to perceive 
in what possible mode, a secession of the southern 
States would tend to guard and perpetuate the in- 
stitution of slavery. 

Would a dissolution of the Union augment the 
power and wealth of the slave States ? The power 
and wealth of a nation depend on its population, 



CONSEQUENCES OF A SEPARATION. 193 

industry, and commerce. The increase of the 
white population at the South is now small, com- 
pared with the wonderful tide of life which is roll- 
ing over the western plains. And when the 
southern region shall be insulated from the sym- 
pathies of the whole civilized world, and conse- 
crated to a stern and remorseless despotism, — a 
despotism sooner or later to be engulphed in blood, 
by what attraction will it divert the tide of emi- 
gration from the fair prairies of the west, to its 
own sugar and cotton fields ? If even now, armed 
patroles must traverse at night the streets and 
highways that the whites may sleep in safety, and 
military preparation is essential to domestic se- 
curity,* what husband or father will take up his 
residence in the new empire when withdrawn 
from the protection of the Federal Government, 
and the friendship of its neighbours ? The slaves 
are now rapidly gaining upon their masters, and 
will increase in a still greater ratio after the sepa- 
ration, since the prudent and the enterprising will 
abandon the doomed region, and few or none will 
enter it from without. Hence it is obvious that 

* "A state of military preparation must always be with us a state 

of perfect domestic security. A profound peace, and consequent 

apathy, may expose us to the danger of domestic insurrection.'' — 

Message of Gov. Hayne to the Legislature of South Carolina, 1833. 

17 



194 CONSEQUENCES OF A SEPARATION. 

the white population could gain no accession from 
the erection of the southern States into a separate 
confederacy. 

Would secession augment the wealth of the 
South ? Be it remembered that there is now no 
one restriction on southern industry and en- 
terprise which separation would remove. The 
slaveholders in Congress with rare exceptions, 
have conducted the affairs of the nation to suit 
themselves. So far as the interests of the north- 
ern manufacturer were identified with the tariff, 
they have been sacrificed at the mandate of the 
cotton grower; and so far as national legislation 
can promote the wealth of the South, the stat- 
utes are already enacted. 

It will not be denied that the larger portion of 
the strength of the Union — population, money, 
commerce, and shipping is to be found at the 
North. In all these elements of national power, 
the South participates equally with the North. 
The foreign invader is kept from her shores, and 
her property abroad is protected from spoliation 
at least as much by the power of the North, as by 
her own. Her strength for all purposes of de- 
fence, is the strength of the Union. What would 
it be after secession ? True it is, the South would 
receive Texas into her arms, but she would derive 



CONSEQUENCES OF A SEPARATION. 195 

neither honour nor power from the loathsome em- 
brace. Annexation now would ensure to her the 
political dominion of the whole Republic, but 
after secession, would cause rather weakness than 
strength. 

As we can discover no possible advantage 
which the South could derive from secession, we 
are convinced that the threats of dissolving the 
Union, which her statesmen are so prodigal in 
scattering, are the ebullitions of passion, or the 
devices of policy, rather than the result of mature 
determination. This conviction is strengthened 
by still further considerations. 

Should the slave States withdraw without any 
aggression on their rights, but for the sole purpose 
of enjoying in greater privacy and tranquillity the 
sweets of slavery, they would leave the whole 
North in a state of high exasperation. The liga- 
ments which have so long bound us together, can- 
not be ruthlessly and wantonly torn asunder, with- 
out causing deep and festering wounds, the con- 
sequences of which, the imagination revolts from 
anticipating. And in what light would the dark 
and gloomy despotism be viewed by the civilized 
world ? Mankind would behold, and wonder, and 
despise. The new State would be excluded from 
the companionship of nations. Her cotton would 



196 CONSEQUENCES OF A SEPARATION. 

indeed be still purchased, as we buy the coffee of 
Hayti ; but with the least possible intimacy. Al- 
ready is our Minister at London treated with 
contumely, because he is a slaveholder — as the 
representative only of the men who had shattered 
the American republic to secure the permanency 
of human bondage, he would not be endured at 
any court in Europe with the exception of Con- 
stantinople. In a few years, the slaves would at- 
tain a frightful numerical superiority over their 
masters. The dread of insurrection within, and 
of aggression from without, would realize the pre- 
diction of holy writ, when men's hearts shall fail 
them for fear, and for looking after those things 
which are coming on the earth. At length the 
fatal period would arrive, when, stung with insults 
and injuries, the new empire would appeal to 
arms; and should a hostile army land upon its 
shores, the standard of emancipation would be 
reared, and slavery would expire in blood. 

We well know with what indignant feelings these 
pages will at first be read by many ; and fortunate 
shall we deem ourselves should we escape the 
imputation of writing to promote insurrection and 
disunion. But we appeal from the decision of 
angry passion, to that of calm reflection. Do we 
not speak the words of truth and soberness ? Do 



CONSEQUENCES OF A SEPARATION. 197 

not the signs of the times warrant our predictions 1 
In what respect do the sentiments we have uttered 
conflict with the lessons of history, or the charac- 
ter of human nature ? Do we love the union of 
the States? (!) If such a love can descend by in- 
heritance, we should possess it; if it can be founded 
on the most thorough conviction of the importance 
of union not merely to the prosperity of our coun- 
try, but to the happiness of numerous and beloved 
children and relatives, we should possess it. If 
the history of the States of Greece, of Italy, of 
Holland, of Germany, of South America, and of 
our own land, demonstrates the blessings of union, 
and the calamities of separation ; then should the 
prayer of every American ascend to Heaven for 
the perpetuity of the American Union. But let 
it be a union for the preservation, not the destruc- 
tion of liberty : a union cemented by a sacred ob- 
servance of the constitutional compact ; not en- 
forced by gag laws, a censorship of the press, and 
the abrogation of the right of petition — a union 
in conformity with the will of God, not in 
contempt of his authority — a union that shall be 
regarded as a common blessing, not held as a 
boon from the South, ever ready to be withdrawn 
as a penalty for the discharge of moral and poli- 
tical duties. 

17* 



198 CONCLUSION. 

May Almighty God in mercy preserve the friends 
of emancipation, from the sin and folly of even 
hazarding the Union, by the slightest encroach- 
ment on the constitutional rights of the South, and 
may He give them grace to maintain their own 
rights in defiance of every menace. 

Note. Mr. Monroe is inadvertently said (p. 105) 
to have been placed at the head of the American 
Colonization Society : he zuas President not of the 
parent institution, but of one of its auxiliaries. 



APPENDIX. 

Having mentioned the charge made by President 
Jackson against the New-York abolitionists, in his 
message to Congress, and alluded to the letter 
they addressed to him respecting it, we have 
thought it might be useful to insert here the letter 
itself, as showing more in detail one of the unwar- 
rantable expedients to which the Federal Govern- 
ment has resorted in behalf of slavery. 

" To the President of the United States : 

" Sir : — In your message to Congress of the 7th 
instant, are the following passages : ' I must also 
invite your attention to the painful excitement 
produced in the South, by attempts to circulate 
through the mails, inflammatory appeals, addres- 
sed to the jwssions of the slaves, in prints and in 
various sorts of publications, calculated to stimu- 
late them to insurrection, and produce all the hor- 
rors of a servile war. There is, doubtless, no re- 



200 APPENDIX. 

spectable portion of our countrymen who can be 
so far misled as to feel any other sentiment than 
that of indignant regret, at conduct so destruc- 
tive of the harmony and peace of the country, and 
so repugnant to the principles of our national com- 
pact, and to the dictates of humanity and religion' 
You remark, that it is fortunate that the people 
of the North have ' given so strong and impres- 
sive a tone to the sentiments entertained against 
the proceedings of the misguided persons who 
have engaged in these unconstitutional and wicked 
attempts.'' And you proceed to suggest to Con- 
gress, ' the propriety of passing such a law as will 
prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation 
in the southern States, through the mails, of in- 
cendiary publications, intended to instigate the 
slaves to insurrection? 

"A servile insurrection, as experience has shown, 
involves the slaughter of the whites, without re- 
spect to sex or age. Hence, sir, the purport of 
the information you have communicated to Con- 
gress and to the world, is, that there are Ameri- 
can citizens who, in violation of the dictates of 
humanity and religion, have engaged in unconsti- 
tutional and wicked attempts to circulate, through 
the mails, inflammatory appeals addressed to the 
passions of the slaves, and which appeals, as is 



APPENDIX. 



201 



implied in the object of your proposed law, are 
intended to stimulate the slaves to indiscriminate 
massacre. Recent events irresistibly confine the 
application of your remarks to the officers and 
members of the American Anti-slavery Society 
and its auxiliaries. 

"On the 28th of March, 1834, the Senate of the 
United States passed the following resolution : 

'Resolved, That the President, in relation to 
the public revenue, has assumed upon himself 
authority and power not conferred by the Con- 
stitution and laws, but in derogation of both.' 

" On the 5th of the ensuing month, you transmit- 
ted to that body your ' solemn protest ' against 
their decision. Instructed by you:' example, we 
now, sir, in behalf of the Society of which we 
are the constituted organs, and in behalf of all 
who are associated with it, present to you this, our 
4 solemn protest' against your grievous and un- 
founded accusations. 

" Should it be supposed, that in thus addressing 
you, we are wanting in the respect due to your 
exalted station, we offer, in our vindication, your 
own acknowledgement to the Senate : ' Subject 
only to the restraints of truth and justice, the free 
people of the United States have the undoubted 
right as individuals, or collectively, orally, or in 



202 APPENDIX. 

writing, at such times and in such language and 
form as they may think proper, to discuss his (the 
President's) official conduct, and to express and 
promulgate their opinions concerning it.' 

"In the exercise of this 'undoubted right,' we 
protest against the judgement you have pronounc- 
ed against the abolitionists. 

" First. Because, in rendering that judgement 
officially, you assumed a power not belonging to 
your office. 

" You complained that the resolution censuring 
your conduct, 'though adopted by the Senate in 
its legislative capacity, is, in its effects and in its 
characteristics, essentially judicial.'' And thus, 
sir, although the charges of which we complain 
were made by you in your executive capacity, 
they are, equally with the resolution, essentially 
judicial. The Senate adjudged that your conduct 
was unconstitutional. You pass the same judge- 
ment on our efforts. Nay, sir, you go farther than 
the Senate. That body forebore to impeach your 
motives — but you have assumed the prerogatives, 
not only of a court of law, but of conscience — 
and pronounce our efforts to be wicked as well as 
unconstitutional. 

" Secondly. We protest against the jmbllciti/ you 
have given to your accusations. 



APPENDIX. 203 

M You felt it to be a grievance, that the charge 
against you was * spread upon the Journal of the 
Senate, published to the nation and to the world 
— made part of our enduring archives, and incor- 
porated in the history of the age. The punish- 
ment of removal from office, and future disqualifi- 
cation, does not follow the decision ; but the mor- 
al influence of a solemn declaration by a majority 
of the Senate, that the accused is guilty of the of- 
fence charged upon him, has been as effectually 
secured as if the like declaration had been made 
upon an impeachment expressed in the same 
terms.' 

"And is it nothing, sir. that we are officially 
charged by the President of the United States, 
with wicked and unconstitutional efforts, and with 
harbouring the most execrable intentions; and> 
this too, in a document spread upon the Journals 
of both Houses of Congress, published to the na- 
tion and to the world, made part of our enduring 
archives, and incorporated in the history of the 
age? It is true, that although you have given 
judgement against us, you cannot award execu- 
tion. We are not, indeed, subjected to the pen- 
alty of murder ; but need we ask you, sir, what 
must be the moral influence of your declaration, 
that we have intended its perpetration? 



204 APPENDIX. 

" Thirdly. We protest against your condemna- 
tion of us unheard. 

" What, sir, was your complaint against the Sen- 
ate ? ' Without notice, unheard, and untried, I 
find myself charged, on the records of the Senate, 
and in a form unknown in our country, with the 
high crime of violating the laws and Constitution 
of my country. No notice of the charge was 
given to the accused, and no opportunity afforded 
him to respond to the accusation — to meet his 
accusers face to face — to cross-examine the wit- 
nesses — to procure counteracting testimony, or 
to be heard in his defence.' 

" Had you, sir, done to others, as it thus seems 
you would that others should do to you, no occa- 
sion would have been given for this protest. You 
most truly assert, in relation to the conduct of the 
Senate, ' It is the policy of our benign system of 
jurisprudence, to secure in all criminal proceed- 
ings, and even in the most trivial litigations, a 
fair, unprejudiced, and impartial trial.' And by 
what authority, sir, do you except such of your 
fellow-citizens as are known as abolitionists, from 
the' benefit of this benign system? When has a 
fair, unprejudiced, and impartial trial been accor- 
ded to those who dare to maintain that all men 
are equally entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit 



APPENDIX. 205 

of happiness ? What was the trial, sir, which 
preceded the judgement you have rendered against 
them ? 

"Fourthly. We protest against the vagueness of 
your charges. 

"We cannot more forcibly describe the injustice 
you have done us. than by adopting your own in- 
dignant remonstrance, against what you deemed 
similar injustice on the part of the Senate : ' Some 
of the first principles of natural right and enlight- 
ened jurisprudence, have been violated in the very 
form of the resolution. It carefully abstains from 
averring in which of the late proceedings the Pre- 
sident has assumed upon himself authority and 
power not conferred by the constitution and laws. 
Why was not the certainty of the offence, the na- 
ture and cause of the accusation, set out in the 
manner required in the constitution, before even 
the humblest individual, for the smallest crime, 
can be exposed to condemnation ? Such a speci- 
fication was due to the accused, that he might 
direct his defence to the real points of attack. A 
more striking illustration of the soundness and 
necessity of the rules which forbid vague and in- 
definite generalities, and require a reasonable cer- 
tainty in all judicial allegations, and a more glar- 
ing instance of the violation of these rules, has 
seldom been exhibited.' 
18 



206 APPENDIX. 

"It has been reserved for you, sir, to exhibit a 
still more striking illustration of the importance of 
these rules, and a still more glaring instance of 
their violation. You have accused an indefinite 
number of your fellow- citizens, without designation 
of name or residence, of making unconstitutional 
and wicked efforts, and of harbouring intentions 
which could be entertained only by the most de- 
praved and abandoned of mankind ; and yet you 
carefully abstain from averring which article of 
the constitution they have transgressed ; you omit 
stating when, where, and by whom these wicked 
attempts were made ; you give no specification of 
the inflammatory appeals which you assert have 
been addressed to the passions of the slaves. You 
well know that the 'moral influence' of your 
charges will affect thousands of your countrymen, 
many of them your political friends — some of 
them heretofore honoured with your confidence — 
most, if not all of them, of irreproachable charac- 
ters ; and yet, by the very vagueness of your 
charges, you incapacitate each one of this multitude 
from proving his innocence. 

"Fifthly. We protest against your charges, be- 
cause they are untrue. Surely, sir, the burthen 
of proof rests upon you. If you possess evidence 
against us, we are by your own showing, entitled 
to ' an opportunity to cross-examine witnesses, to 



APPENDIX. 



207 



procure counteracting testimony, and to be heard 
in [our] defence.' You complained that you had 
been denied such an opportunity. It was not to 
have been expected, then, that you would make 
the conduct of the Senate the model of your own. 
Conscious of the wrong done to you, and protest- 
ing against it, you found yourself compelled to 
enter on your defence. You have placed us in 
similar circumstances, and we proceed to follow 
your example : 

"The substance of your various allegations may 
be embodied in the charge, that we have attempted 
to circulate, through the mails, appeals addressed 
to the passions of the slaves, calculated to stimulate 
them to insurrection, and with the intention of pro- 
ducing a servile war. 

" It is deserving of notice, that the attempt to 
circulate our papers, is alone charged upon us. 
It is not pretended that we have put our appeals 
into the hands of a single slave, or that, in any 
instance, our endeavours to excite a servile war 
have been crowned with success. And in what 
way was our most execrable attempts made ? By 
secret agents, traversing the slave country in dis- 
guise, stealing by night into the hut of the slave, 
and there reading to him our inflammatory ap- 
peals ? You, sir, answer this question by declar- 
ing, that we attempted the mighty mischief by 



208 APPENDIX. 

circulating our appeals ' through the mails !' 
And are the southern slaves, sir, accustomed to 
receive periodicals by mail ? Of the thousands 
of publications mailed from the Anti-slavery Of- 
fice for the South, did you ever hear, sir, of one 
solitary paper being addressed to a slave ? Would 
you know to whom they were directed, consult 
the southern newspapers, and you will find them 
complaining that they were sent to public officers, 
clergymen, and other influential citizens. Thus 
it seems we are incendiaries, who place the torch 
*n the hands of him whose dwellings we would 
fire ! We are conspiring to excite a servile war, 
and announce our design to the masters, and com- 
mit to their care and disposal the very instru- 
ments by which we expect to effect our purpose ! 
It has been said that thirty or forty of our papers 
were received at the South, directed to free peo- 
ple of colour. We cannot deny the assertion, 
because these papers may have been mailed by 
others, for the sinister purpose of charging the 
act upon us. We are, however, ready to make 
our several affidavits, that not one paper, with 
our knowledge, or by our authority, has ever been 
sent to any such person in a slave State. The 
free people of colour at the South can exert no 
influence in behalf of the enslaved ; and we have 



APPENDIX. 209 

no disposition to excite odium against them, by- 
making them the recipients of our publications. 

" Your proposal that a law should be passed, 
punishing the circulation, through the mails, of 
papers intended to excite the slaves to insurrection, 
necessarily implies that such papers are now cir- 
culated ; and you expressly and positively assert, 
that we have attempted to circulate appeals ad- 
dressed to the passions of the slaves, and calcu- 
lated to produce all the horrors of a servile war^ 
We trust, sir, your proposed law, so portentous to 
the freedom of the press, will not be enacted, till 
you have furnished Congress with stronger evi- 
dence of its necessity than unsupported asser- 
tions. We hope you will lay before that body, 
for its information, the papers to which you refer. 
This is the more necessary, as the various public 
journals and meetings which have denounced us 
for entertaining insurrectionary and murderous 
designs, have in no instance been able to quote 
from our publications, a single exhortation to the 
slaves to break their fetters, or the expression of 
a solitary wish for a servile war. 

" How far our writings are ' calculated ' to pro- 
duce insurrection, is a question which will be va- 
riously decided according to the latitude in which 
it is discussed. When we recollect that the hum- 
18* 



210 APPENDIX. 

ble school-book, the tale of fiction, and the costly 
annual, have been placed under the ban of south- 
ern editors for trivial allusions to slavery — and 
that a southern divine has warned his fellow-citi- 
zens of the danger of permitting slaves to be pre- 
sent at the celebration of our national festival, 
where they might listen to the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and to eulogiums on liberty, — we have 
little hope that our disquisitions on human rights 
will be generally deemed safe and innocent, where 
those rights are habitually violated. Certain wri- 
tings of one of your predecessors, President Jef- 
ferson, would undoubtedly be regarded, in some 
places, so insurrectionary as to expose to popu- 
lar violence whoever should presume to circulate 
them. 

" As therefore, sir, there is no common standard 
by which the criminality of opinions respecting 
slavery can be tested, we acknowledge the fore- 
sight which prompted you to recommend, that the 
'severe penalties' of your proposed law should be 
awarded, not according to the character of the 
publication, but the intention of the writer. Still, 
sir, we apprehend that no trivial difficulties will 
be experienced in the application of your law. 
The writer may be ano'iymous, or beyond the 
reach of prosecution, while the porter who de- 
posites the papers in the post-office, and the mail 



APPENDIX. 211 

carrier who transports them, having no evil in- 
tentions, cannot be visited with the 'severe pen- 
alties ;' and thus will your law fail in securing to 
the South that entire exemption from all discus- 
sion on the subject of slavery, which it so vehe- 
mently desires. The success of the attempt al- 
ready made to establish a censorship of the press, 
is not such as to invite farther encroachment on 
the rights of the people to publish their senti- 
ments. 

" In your protest, you remarked to the Senate : 
'The whole Executive power being vested in the 
President, who is responsible for its exercise, it is 
a necessary consequence that he should have a 
right to employ agents of his own choice, to aid 
him in the performance of his duties, and to dis- 
charge them when he is no longer willing to be 
responsible for their acts. He is equally bound 
to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, 
whether they impose duties on the highest officer 
of State, or the lowest subordinate in any of the 
departments/ 

" It may not be uninteresting to you, sir, to be 
informed in what manner your ' Subordinate' in 
New-York, who, on your ' responsibility,' is exer- 
cising the functions of Censor of the American 
press, discharges the arduous duties of this untri- 
ed, and until now, unheard of office. We beg 



212 APPENDIX. 

leave to assure you, that his task is executed with 
a simplicity of principle, and celerity of despatch, 
unknown to any Censor of the press in France 
or Austria. Your subordinate decides upon the 
incendiary character of the publications commit- 
ted to the post-office, by a glance at the wrappers 
or bags in which they are contained. No pack- 
ages sent to be mailed from our office, and direct- 
ed to a slave State, can escape the vigilance of 
this inspector of canvass and brown paper. Even 
your own protest, sir, if in an anti-slavery envel- 
ope, would be arrested on its progress to the 
South, as 'inflammatory, incendiary, and insurrec- 
tionary in the highest degree/ 

" No veto, however, is as yet imposed on the 
circulation of publications from any printing-office 
but our own. Hence, when we desire to send 
' appeals ' to the South, all that is necessary is, to 
insert them in some newspaper that espouses our 
principles, pay for as many thousand copies as we 
think proper, and order them to be mailed ac- 
cording to our instructions. 

" Such, sir, is the worthless protection purchased 
for the South, by the most unblushing and danger- 
ous usurpation of which any public officer has 
been guilty since the organization of our Federal 
Government. Were the Senate, in reference to 
your acknowledged responsibility for the conduct 



APPENDIX. 213 

of your subordinates, to resolve 'that the Presi- 
dent, in relation to the suppression of certain pa- 
pers in the New- York Post-Office, has assumed 
upon himself authority and power not conferred 
by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of 
both;' instead of protesting against the charge, 
you would be compelled to acknowledge its 
truth, and you would plead the necessity of the 
case in your vindication. The weight to be at- 
tached to such a plea, may be learned from the 
absurdity and inefficacy of the New-York Cen- 
sorship. Be assured, sir, your proposed law to 
punish the intentions of an author, will, in its prac- 
tical operations, prove equally impotent. 

" And now, sir, permit us respectfully to sug- 
gest to you, the propriety of ascertaining the 
real designs of abolitionists, before your appre- 
hensions of them lead you to sanction any more 
trifling with the liberty of the press. You as- 
sume it as a fact, that abolitionists are miscre- 
ants, who are labouring to effect the massacre of 
their southern brethren. Are you aware of the 
extent of the reproach which such an assumption 
casts upon the character of your countrymen ? 
In August last, the number of Anti-slavery So- 
cieties known to us was 2G3 ; we have now the 
names of more than 350 societies, and accessions 
are daily made to the multitude who embrace 



214 



APPENDIX. 



our principles. And can you think it possible, sir, 
that these citizens are deliberately plotting mur- 
der, and furnishing us with funds to send publica- 
tions to the South ' intended to instigate the slaves 
to insurrection?' Is there anything in the cha- 
racter and manners of the free States, to warrant 
the imputation on their citizens of such enormous 
wickedness ? Have you ever heard, sir, of whole 
communities in these States subjecting obnoxious 
individuals to a mock trial, and then, in contempt 
of law, humanity, and religion, deliberately mur- 
dering them ? You have seen, in the public jour- 
nals, great rewards offered for the perpetration of 
horrible crimes. We appeal to your candour, 
and ask, were these rewards offered by aboli- 
tionists, or by men whose charges against aboli- 
tionists you have condescended to sanction and 
disseminate ? 

"And what, sir, is the character of those whom 
you have in your message held up to the execra- 
tion of the civilized w r orld ? Their enemies being 
judges, they are religious fanatics. And what 
are the haunts of these plotters of murder V The 
pulpit, the bench, the bar, the professor's chair, 
the hall of legislation, the meeting for prayer, the 
temple of the Most High. But strange and mon- 
strous as is this conspiracy, still you believe in its 
existence, and call on Congress to counteract it. 



APPENDIX. 215 

Be persuaded, sir, the moral sense of the commu- 
nity is abundantly sufficient to render this conspi- 
racy utterly impotent the moment its machina- 
tions are exposed. Only PROVE the assertions 
and insinuations in your message, and you dissolve 
in an instant every Anti-slavery Society in our 
land. Think not, sir, that we shall interpose any 
obstacle to an inquiry into our conduct. We in- 
vite, nay, sir, we entreat the appointment by Con- 
gress of a Committee of Investigation to visit the 
Anti-slavery Office in New- York. They shall be 
put in possession of copies of all the publications 
that have issued from our press. Our whole cor- 
respondence shall be submitted to their inspec- 
tion ; our accounts of receipts and expenditures 
shall be spread before them, and we ourselves 
will cheerfully answer under oath whatever inter- 
rogatories they may put to us relating to the 
charges you have advanced. 

" Should such a committee be denied, and 
should the law you propose, stigmatizing us as 
felons, be passed without inquiry into the truth of 
your accusation, and without allowing us a hear- 
ing, then shall we make the language of your pro- 
test our own, and declare that, 'If such proceed- 
ings shall be approved and sustained by an intelli- 
gent people, then will the great contest with arbi- 
trary power which had established in statutes, in 



216 APPENDIX. 

bills of rights, in sacred charters, and in constitu- 
tions of government, the right of every citizen to 
a notice before trial, to a hearing before condem- 
nation, and to an impartial tribunal for deciding 
on the charge, have been made in VAIN.' 

" Before we conclude, permit us, sir, to offer 
you the following assurances. 

" Our principles, our objects, and our measures, 
are wholly uncontaminated by considerations of 
party policy. Whatever may be our respective 
opinions as citizens, of men and measures, as abo- 
litionists we have expressed no political prefer- 
ences, and are pursuing no party ends. From 
neither of the gentlemen nominated to succeed 
you, have we any thing to hope or fear; and 
to neither of them do we intend as abolitionists, 
to afford any aid or influence. This declaration 
will, it is hoped, satisfy the partizans of the rival 
candidates, that it is not necessary for them to as- 
sail our rights by way of convincing the South 
that they do not possess our favour. 

" We have addressed you, sir, on this occasion, 
with republican plainness, and Christian sincerity ; 
but with no desire to derogate from the respect 
that is due to you, or wantonly to give you pain. 
To repel your charges, and to disabuse the public, 
was a duty we owed to ourselves, to our children, 
and above all to the great and holy cause in which 



APPENDIX. 217 

we are engaged. That cause we believe is ap- 
proved by our Maker ; and while we retain this 
belief, it is our intention, trusting to His direction 
and protection, to persevere in our endeavours to 
impress upon the minds and hearts of our country- 
men, the sinfulness of claiming property in human 
beings, and the duty and wisdom of immediately 
relinquishing it. 

When convinced that our endeavours are wrong, 
we shall abandon them ; but such conviction must 
be produced by other arguments than vituperation, 
popular violence, or penal enactments. 
ARTHUR TAPPAN, 
WILLIAM JAY, 
JOHN RANKIN, 
ABRAHAM L. COX, 
JOSHUA LEAVITT, 
SIMEON S. JOCELYN, 
LEWIS TAPPAN, 
THEODORE S. WRIGHT, 
SAMUEL E. CORNISH, 
ELIZUR WRIGHT, Jr. 

Executive Committee. 
New-York, Dec. 26, 1835. 

THE END. 

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